I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Become the Ultimate Defensive Hero
by FoxOnPie
Summary: BOFURI crossover. The world has seen a great many powerful Heroes: All Might, Endeavor, Best Jeanist, Mirko, the list goes on. However, none have ever been-or ever would be-more or a monster than the deadliest Hero ever to be born: a cute little girl named Maple. *Now with a TV Tropes page!*
1. An Overpowered Start

Kaede Honjo was more or less a typical child. Just like most children, she loved her mom and dad, she had a best friend in the world—though she doubted any of them could compare to Risa—and she always went to school even when she didn't feel like it. She said and did things that never really stood out, and it'd be rather difficult for someone to pick her out of a crowd. If she was being honest, there was only one thing about her that made her different from her peers.

Kaede Honjo didn't feel like being a Hero.

* * *

"But it'd be so much fun!" was what Risa Shiramine, her best friend and the best best friend in the world, said the first time Kaede brought it up while they were playing together in. "Just imagine it: bad guys running around causing trouble, everyone's scared out of their minds, and then bam! You make a big entrance and beat them all up, and the crowd just goes wild! 'Yay! Yahoo! We love you, Sally, you're the best!'"

"That does sound like fun, but I still don't know if I want to do that," Kaede said. "I mean, Heroes are always putting themselves in danger, right? They're always going out and getting into fights where they can get really hurt, and that's scary, right? What if someone shoots me in the leg? Or punches me in the face? Or makes me get a splinter? I hate splinters, Risa!"

"Come on, splinters aren't a big deal."

"Tell that to all the infections they give people every year!" Just the thought of it was making Kaede shake like a leaf. Of course, anything that could cause anyone pain did that to her, on account of her traumatophobia. Risa and her parents always liked to tell her that it was psychosomatic, but if that were true, then all the things she read about it wouldn't have sounded so convincing.

"You know you don't have to worry about getting hurt if you just use your Quirk, right?"

"That's easy for you to say, Risa. You've got a Quirk that makes you super fast so no one will touch you, but what if I get a Quirk that doesn't stop people from hitting me?" Risa hummed for a second before patting the top of Kaede's head.

"Well, if that happens, I'll just pick you up and carry you out of trouble. How's that sound?"

"That sounds nice, I guess," Kaede said, smiling partly because of the comment, partly because of the head pats. Having Risa reassure her that everything would be okay was nice to hear, but it still didn't change the fact that the idea of getting hurt even a little made being a Hero sound like a nightmare.

The only way she'd even consider it was if she gained a Quirk that could keep her from getting hurt.

* * *

The next morning, Kaede awoke to find a heavy weight on her left side. Usually, the only time something like that ever happened was when Risa slept over and rolled on top of her, so this had to be something else.

"What?" When Kaede looked over to her left, she saw that the apparent something else was her holding onto a metal shield as big as herself, if not a little bigger. It was black as night with blood-red lines running around the front, giving the whole thing a menacing design.

It was very cool to look at.

"I gotta go show Risa!" She didn't know where the shield came from, but she knew that Risa would get a kick out of seeing it. However, upon remembering how heavy the shield was, she decided to leave it at home and just bring Risa over to look at it.

That was the plan, but as soon as she took a step out of her bedroom, the shield vanished in a black light and reappeared in her left hand.

"Huh? What? Why did you—wait, that's it! You're my Quirk! My Quirk is a shield! Yay!" The one thing she wanted was a Quirk that could keep her from getting hurt, and now it was literally in the palm of her hands.

She'd jump for joy if she didn't have so much weight weighing down her tiny body.

* * *

Kaede's parents ended up being the first ones to see her Quirk, and the first thing they did after sharing her excitement was to bring her to the doctor for a full analysis. Kaede didn't get why that was necessary, but at the very least, they were going to the best doctor around, so there was nothing to worry about.

"Remarkable, truly remarkable," said her doctor, Kyudai Garaki.

"I know, right? It's a shield! And a really big one!" Kaede said

"Yes, Kaede-kun, and while a Quirk manifesting as an inanimate object is certainly unique, that's not what I was talking about. Mr. and Mrs. Honjo, you both have Quirks that are completely different from this, yes?"

"That's right," said Kaede's father, Matsuda Honjo. "My Quirk lets me create knives out of thin air, and Sugi's lets her fire lasers out of her hands that can bounce off of anything they touch."

"It's so strange that Kaede didn't gain a Quirk resembling either of those," said Kaede's mother, Sugiko. She said that, but Kaede couldn't feel luckier to not have a Quirk that could let someone actually hit her.

"It's strange, yes, but not impossible," Dr. Garaki said. "While most people develop Quirks that are either one of their parents' or a combination of both of them, there are extremely rare cases of a person undergoing a mutation that gives them a Quirk completely removed from their family tree. I believe that Kaede-kun is one such person."

"So I'm super special? Yay!" Kaede said. She jumped out of her chair in celebration, but the weight of her shield made her stumble a bit and bump into Dr. Garaki.

Almost immediately, Dr. Garaki fell down on one knee.

"Oh no, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hurt you!"

"Are you all right?" Sugiko asked.

"I'm fine, I'm fine, Kaede-kun barely touched me," Dr. Garaki said. "Kaede-kun barely touched me, yet I'm suddenly out of breath. Could this be—"

"Hey, look!" Matsuda said, pointing at Kaede's shield. A red light shimmered on the surface as a small red jewel appeared out of nowhere. Everyone looked at it with amazement, but Kaede was too busy with all of the new information flowing into her head.

"Dr. Garaki, you're super old!" Kaede said.

"Kaede, don't be rude."

"No, he's super old because he's got a Quirk that makes him live longer, and now I've got it, too!" Dr. Garaki's jaw dropped for reasons Kaede didn't understand.

"What do you mean you have his Quirk?" Sugiko asked.

"When I touched him with my shield, a whole bunch of weird stuff went flying into my head, and now I feel like I can use a bunch of stuff I couldn't use before. Oh, wait!" Kaede walked over and touched her father with her shield. He stumbled back a bit. As he did, another red jewel appeared on Kaede's shield, and with it, new knowledge and power flowed into Kaede. "Knives Out!"

The second jewel shined red. A second later, a butter knife appeared out of thin air and fell at Kaede's feet.

"That's my Quirk! Kaede, your Quirk really does let you copy other Quirks!" Matsuda said.

"I know! It's so cool!" Kaede said.

"It really is—wait, Dr. Garaki, aren't you famously Quirkless?" Sugiko asked.

"Well, that's enough for one day! Kaede-kun seems healthy, but if anything changes, please don't hesitate to call me, okay? Okay! Goodbye!" Dr. Garaki practically shoved them out the door, for some reason. Kaede's parents seemed confused by it, but she didn't care. She was too busy thinking about everything that could be done with her Quirk. All of the possibilities it had in store, all of the advantages it could give her over someone.

Most of all, she thought about all the fighting she could protect herself from.

* * *

When the Honjos returned home, the first thing Kaede did was walk next door to Risa's house—she would have run if her shield didn't make her so slow—and tell Risa about her amazing Quirk. Risa was blown away, if not a little confused, and she wasted no time in bringing her to the nearby park so they could work out the specifics of her Quirk. After a few hours of that, they had made a great deal of discoveries.

First, while Kaede could let go of her shield, if she stepped more than a meter and a half away from it, either the shield would automatically reappear on her left arm or she would automatically be sent to where the shield was. Risa thought that there were good combat applications for that, but Kaede was just glad that she always had a means of defending herself.

Second, the shield was indestructible, or at least it was strong enough to not take any damage from the explosion Quirk a kid used on it when they asked him nicely. Not only that, but if the stick that broke against her head was any indication, then some degree of the shield's durability transferred over to Kaede, even when she wasn't holding onto it; fortunately, the decrease in speed from holding such a heavy item didn't persist when the shield was away from her. That went a long way towards helping Kaede with the traumatophobia that she definitely had.

Third, the Quirks she copied would only activate if she said their name aloud. The whole process made her feel like an anime character, and that was a pretty cool feeling to have.

Fourth, and finally, she could only hold onto ten Quirks at once. If she took in any extras, then they would end up in some sort of space in the back of her head she called an "inventory". Kaede couldn't figure out how to switch between Quirks in her shield and Quirks in her inventory, but she was sure that she'd figure it out, eventually.

All in all, her Quirk was truly awesome.

* * *

"Use it."

"I don't wanna."

"Please?"

"It's getting late, let's go home."

"Pretty please?" "Pretty" please. It was very hard for Kaede to argue with Risa when she played that card. In fact, it was downright impossible, what with how adorable she always made her eyes look and everything.

"Okay, I'll do it," Kaede said. "Top Gear!" The jewel for Risa's Quirk started shining, and with it, Kaede gained a burst of uncontrollable speed that caused her to run headfirst into a nearby tree.

"You know my Quirk stops working if you get hit, right?" Risa said with a laugh. Kaede groaned as she pulled her head away from the tree and the sizable imprint she had created.

"I told you I didn't want to use it!" Kaede said. "You know I'm not good with running and stuff."

"Yeah, but when was I ever going to see someone else use my own Quirk? Never!"

"I think I'll just focus on making myself as unbreakable as my shield. Being fast enough to dodge attacks is fine, but if I'm too tough to get hurt, then it won't matter if they hit me, right?"

"I guess so. Wait, does this mean you want to be a Hero, now?!"

"Huh?" That was a good question. Getting a Quirk that could keep her from getting hurt was the only condition she set for becoming a Hero, and now it had been met. Then again, she still didn't know all the ins and outs of her Quirk, so for all she knew, it wasn't the perfect defense she hoped it would be.

Before she could contemplate the issue further, a black cloud with large yellow dots appeared in front of Kaede and Risa.

"Hello, Kaede Honjo, my name is Kurogiri." The cloud morphed into a humanoid shape, complete with a sharp suit that did little to diminish the menacing nature of his voice. "I've been told that you've awakened a powerful Quirk, one that my Master would have a great deal of interest in. I'd like for you to come with me, and I'd prefer it if you didn't fight."

Before Kaede could sputter out a response, Risa picked her up in her arms and ran away from the scene at her top speed.

"Help! A Villain's attacking! Help!" Risa shouted. Kaede had never seen her friend appear as anything other than confident and brave, but now she looked like she was ready to faint. That was probably a worse sight than the actual Villain.

"I didn't simply grab you because I didn't want a struggle and I wanted you to think I wouldn't hurt you, but if you're giving me the former, then I don't need to lie about the latter!" A black, cloudy mass appeared in front of Kaede and Risa, but Risa was able to turn away from it just in time to avoid it. More and more shadowy masses appeared in their path, and while Risa was able to dodge, each dodge gradually became closer and closer.

_No one's coming to save us, and Risa can't keep going like this! _Kaede thought. _Okay Kaede, if you were ever going to be a Hero, now's the time! _

"Wings!" Kaede said, grabbing Risa tight. One of the jewels on her shield shimmered, and from her back sprouted large, reptilian wings. Kaede flapped with all of her might and took her and Risa into the air. "Top Gear!" Activating Risa's Quirk on top of that, her flight became extremely accelerated.

"Here I thought I was protecting you," Risa said. Kaede couldn't help but smile at that.

"Stubborn brats!" Kurogiri said as he summoned a mass of shadows far larger than the others and sent it at the two of them.

"Release!" Kaede said, deactivating Wings and Top Gear and sending the two of them into a free fall out of the path of the attack. Kaede positioned her shield underneath the two of them and turned it into a makeshift, indestructible cushion that broke their fall.

At the same time, Risa's body started glowing a pale blue light.

"Kaede, my Quirk just jumped up a level! Let's get out of here!" Risa said.

"Yeah!" Risa picked Kaede back up and started heading for the edge of the park. Kurogiri went back to his usual attack pattern, but now that Kaede's Quirk had reached its second level, she was able to dodge them with ease.

The two of them had just about reached the exit when Kurogiri, himself, warped in front of them. His sudden appearance made Risa accidentally skid to a stop and fall over, causing her Quirk to instantly reset.

"I have allowed you two to give me far too much trouble. It ends now!" Kurogiri said.

_He's gonna do something really bad, I just know it! _Kaede thought. _Think Kaede, think! You need to save yourself, but more importantly, you need to save Risa, but how?! None of my Quirks are anything special on their own, and just using them one after another isn't much help! Oh, if only I could mix them all together into some kind of super Quirk!_

_Wait, why can't I? _If she really thought about it, there was no reason why that wasn't possible. The Quirks she was copying were just artificial things living inside of her and her shield, so she should be able to do what she wanted with them. She just needed to focus on it, and with a little bit of luck, it would all pull through for her. It had to.

"Wings plus Explosion equals Nitro Wings!" One of the jewels on Kaede's shield vanished as wings sprouted out of Kaede's back. However, these wings were twice as large as the old ones and made of fire; as such, they were far cooler. Kaede whipped her wings at Kurogiri just as he moved to attack her and Kaede, and his body was engulfed in a massive explosion upon contact. When the smoke cleared, Kurogiri appeared relatively fine, but it still bought Kaede enough time to complete her true objective: touching him with her shield.

"What the?!" Kurogiri fell down on one knee as Kaede successfully copied his Quirk.

"Go get him, Kaede!" Risa said, finally standing back up.

"Okay, um, oh! Top Gear plus Knives Out plus Warp equals High-Speed Portal Cutter!" Two jewels disappeared, and Kaede fired a series of black lasers from her right hand. They hit random spots in the park and the air before flattening out into large, dark circles. "Risa, tackle him!"

"Right!" Risa activated her Quirk and charged at the still-stunned Kurogiri with presumably all of her might and knocked him into the closest circle. He was instantly sucked into it only to fly out of another one like a bullet out of a gun right into another portal. Then another, and another, and another, and it kept going until there was nothing but a black blue flying through the air.

Eventually, a spot of green was added to it.

"Hahahaha! Behold the power of Devour! I am Kaede Honjo, the super awesome girl! Look on my Quirks, you meany, and despair!" Kaede said, laughing at the top of her lungs.

"You did it, Kaede! You did it!" Risa said, bringing Kaede into a hug. "So, um, how long does this last for?"

"I don't know." She honestly had no idea how long it would last, and it wasn't like she could just deactivate it and give Kurogiri a chance to attack again.

In the middle of all of that, a large, octagonal object flew through the air and hit Kurogiri, knocking him out of the air and onto the ground in a pile of his own vomit.

"Little girls, are you all right?! I'm so sorry it took even more than ten seconds to respond to that distress call! Please forgive me!" There was a person on the scene, a muscular man with a Domino mask, a hooded cape, and stone-like material coming out of his hands. Kaede immediately recognized him as the Shield Hero: Crust, one of the top-ranked Heroes in the country and her personal idol.

"This is the best day ever!" Aside from the attempted kidnapping, it truly was.

* * *

As Kurogiri was hauled off by the police, Kaede overheard the situation from Crust and the police. It turned out that Dr. Garaki was a bad guy who lied about being Quirkless to hide his true identity as an evil scientist who liked to experiment on people. When Kaede exposed him as a Quirk user, he knew it was only a matter of time before people started looking into him, so he needed to run away and start over under a new name, but before all that, he wanted his friend Kurogiri to kidnap Kaede so he could experiment on her for nefarious purposes. Dr. Garaki vanished anyway, but either way, Kaede managed to foil an actual, evil, villainous plot.

It made her feel all wiggly.

"You two did a great job, today! Not many kids your age could stay strong in the face of such adversity, so you two must possess truly tremendous spirit!" Crust said.

"Well, I don't know about me, but Kaede was the one who did all the hard stuff," Risa said.

"I don't know about that, but your friend certainly does have remarkable talent!"

"Y-You think so? Dhank hyu!" Kaede said. Talking to her idol made her so nervous that she bit her tongue, but that did little to deter her.

"Haha! How precious! I need to speak with the police now, but feel free to come to my agency in ten years or so. I'd love to have you!" Crust patted Kaede on the back and headed over to the police, leaving before he got a chance to see the stars in her eyes.

"Did you see that, Risa? I already got a job offer!" Kaede said.

"So does this mean you want to be a Hero?" Risa asked.

"Yeah! I'm already good at it, and now I know that the best way to stop Quirks from hurting me is to just get all the Quirks I can! No one can hurt me with their Quirks if I have all the Quirks!"

"That's the spirit! And me? I'm gonna become so fast that no one will ever get to touch me. We'll be the most invincible Heroes in the world!"

"Yeah!" Kaede wrapped Risa up in a celebratory hug. As she did, she accidentally touched her with her shield and made her fall on her back in exhaustion.

She'd have to work on making that not happen.

* * *

**Name: Kaede Honjo**

**Quirk: Devour**

***Creates an indestructible shield that attaches itself to her left hand. If Kaede is ever more than a meter than a half away from her shield, either the shield will be teleported to her hand or she'll be teleported to the shield.**

***Holding the shield causes Kaede's natural defense to increase and make certain attacks painless.**

***If the shield makes contact with a Quirk user, their energy will be drained and Kaede will obtain a copy of their Quirk, along with complete knowledge of how it works. Once she has copied ten Quirks, all new Quirks are sent into an inaccessible "inventory".**

***Copied Quirks can only be activated by saying their name out loud. In addition, Kaede can combine her Quirks into new ones. Quirks used for this are immediately erased and have to be copied again to be usable.**

***Kaede's Active Quirks:**

****Longevity(Kyudai Garaki)**

****Bouncy Laser(Sugiko Honjo)**

****Stretchy Fingers(Friend of pomeranian boy)**

****Puffy Cheeks(Random kid)**

****Rock Fist(Random kid)**

****Hair Extension(Random kid**

****Nitro Wings**

****High-Speed Portal Cutter**

****Shield(Crust)**

****Top Gear(Risa Shiramine)**

***Quirks in Inventory:**

****Long Neck(Random kid)**

****Muscle Growth(Random kid)**

****Glamour(Random kid)**

****Earphone Jack(Random kid)**

***Discarded Quirks:**

****Explosion(Pomeranian boy)**

****Wings(Friend of pomeranian boy)**

****Knives Out(Matsuda Honjo)**

****Warp(Kurogiri)**

*****Updates on all information pending.**

**Name: Risa Shiramine**

**Quirk: Top Gear**

***Gives Risa a boost in strength and speed upon activation.**

***The boost will continually increase after certain intervals of time, but will automatically reset if Risa takes physical damage.**

****Updates on all information pending.**

* * *

**You know all those stories where Midoriya ends up with All for One for one reason or another? Well, this is going to be like those, but better.**


	2. Wise Investments

Kaede's alarm woke her up with the catchy tune of a pop song Risa recommended to her. Her first few attempts at shutting it off with her right hand ended in failure, so she switched to using her left hand. However, she forgot that she slept with her shield in her hand again, and as a result, her phone ended up getting smashed under the weight.

"I need to stop doing that," Kaede said. Breaking her phone was one thing, but fixing it meant that she had to waste one of her slots first thing in the morning. Sighing, Kaede had one of her ten slots filled—a red gem appearing on her shield in response—and left the rest of them open for later. "Alchemy!"

The single jewel on her shield shimmered. Kaede put her hands together for a second before slamming them against her broken phone. Blue lightning shot about for a brief moment, and once it faded, Kaede's phone was good as new.

With that taken care of, she crawled out of bed and got ready for another day in the life. It took as long as it normally did, though that was still rather slow; when she stepped out of her house to head for school, Risa was already waiting for her, and probably for a while.

"Fashionably late as ever, I see," Risa said. "There's a jewel on your shield, I see. The alarm clock, again?"

"Yeah. Isuzu-chan's not gonna like that," Kaede said, her shoulders falling into a bit of a slouch.

"Oh well, nine isn't that different from ten, anyway. We can still get a lot done with this."

"Yeah!" Kaede Honjo—age eleven—pumped her fist in the air in excitement. Today was going to be even better than the day before, she was sure of it.

* * *

In the seven years since she first obtained Devour, Kaede had learned a lot about how her Quirk worked. Very fortunately, the first thing she figured out were the mechanics behind the "inventory" that some of the Quirks she copied went into, which turned out to not be as inaccessible as she initially thought. The way it worked was that whenever she fell asleep for at least one hour, the Quirks installed into her shield would be taken out, and she could then manually install new Quirks into it from her entire stock. She was free to put in ten Quirks right from the start, but she could also put in fewer than that—even none at all—so she could immediately use any new Quirks she obtained during the day. The most useful part of it was that even if she didn't fill up her shield right when she woke up, she could still add Quirks to it from her inventory throughout the day until she hit ten Quirks through a combination of either old Quirks or new ones.

That was good and all, but what Kaede liked the most was the new information regarding the increase to her physical defense it provided. At some point, Kaede had discovered that the boost in defense would increase as she amassed more and more Quirks, and that was simply perfect for her. Her goal for being a Hero was to have as many Quirks as possible so no one could hurt her, and if pursuing that goal had the added effect of making her body too tough to be hurt, then it meant that all of her bases were being covered.

It truly was the greatest Quirk a person could have.

* * *

"You keep saying it's the greatest Quirk, but how is it possible that you can't stop it from breaking your phone all the time?" Risa asked as she and Kaede walked through the halls of Barosa Elementary.

"That's my fault, not my Quirk's! Don't blame Devour for my mistakes!" Kaede said.

"Okay, okay, sorry." Kaede held her shield up in front of Risa's face.

"Don't apologize to me, apologize to Devour!"

"No."

"But you hurt Devour's feelings!"

"Inanimate objects don't have feelings, Kaede."

"Tell that to Wash!"

"Again, he's not an actual washing machine." Kaede still had her doubts about that, but Risa was adamant in her opinion, and since they had arrived at the school science lab, she had no choice but to let it be. Having lunch with friends was probably more important, anyway.

"Hi, Isuzu-chan!" Kaede said as soon as she and Risa entered the room. Sitting at one of the lab tables with a large assortment of machinery and devices was a girl with long, blue hair wearing a pair of goggles on her head and a brown overcoat over her body.

"Isuzu, you in there?" Risa asked. Isuzu said nothing as she pressed her hands against some pieces of machinery, causing blue lightning to shoot out for a brief moment as they all combined into a spherical device.

"Okay, if I mapped things out right, this one should have a wider explosion radius than the last model, and the activation time should be long enough for someone to take cover in case they throw it at a bad angle. Wait, will shrapnel be a problem? The increase in power might make that a risk. Better make sure to test for that—" Kaede tapped the girl on the shoulder, putting an end to her ranting as she pulled up her goggles and turned to face her and Risa. "Oh, when did you two get here?"

"Just a second ago, but still, try to pay more attention," Risa said.

"Once again, hello, Isuzu-chan!" Kaede said.

"Hello to you two, too," Isuzu Haganeno said with a bit of a laugh. Kaede and Risa had first met Isuzu near the end of the previous year when a drone of her own design had flown into the back of Kaede's head and smashed to bits against it. Isuzu apologized for that, but any thoughts of guilt faded away once Kaede explained how she managed to avoid getting hurt in the slightest. From there, she just kept talking about her Quirk, and Isuzu immediately jumped on the chance to be friends with her, something Kaede was more than happy for.

"We brought you a sandwich. Bread was cut into triangles, just the way you like it," Risa said as Kaede pulled out the aforementioned sandwich. "You know, you shouldn't get so into your work that you forget to eat."

"I'll try to remember when I'm dead."

"Yeah, that's what'll happen." Isuzu shrugged her shoulders and took a bite.

"So Isuzu-chan, who looks good today?" Kaede asked as she pulled out two more sandwiches identical to Isuzu's, one for her, one for Risa.

"I was able to find a lot of potential targets for today," Isuzu said. She pulled out a manilla folder from her backpack and opened it to reveal a series of photographs. "There's a boy who shoots tape from his wrists, three different types of fire users—I'd suggest getting those first and combining them, since you already wasted a slot on my Quirk, then there's a girl who can split her body into multiple sections—"

"Oh, let's start with her!" Kaede said, pointing to a picture of a girl her age with green hair and a large fang. "If I had a Quirk like that, then I could just hit people with my shield without even moving! Wait, would I still get teleported right to my shield in that case?"

"That's a good point. Your Quirk and hers would make for a rather unique combination."

"Well, there's only one way to find out!" Kaede stuffed the rest of her sandwich into her mouth and headed for the door.

"Wait, at least wait for Isuzu to say what class she's in," Risa said. "You're not gonna find her just by taking a step outside!"

Kaede encountered the girl with the body-splitting Quirk after taking two steps outside the room.

Immediately upon seeing her, she touched her with her shield and gained a copy of her Quirk.

"What do I know, I guess?" Risa asked as the girl fell to the ground, exhausted. Kaede reckoned she knew a lot, if she was being honest.

After copying the Quirk she quickly learned was named Lizard Tail Splitter, Kaede left with Risa and Isuzu for their now daily routine of Quirk Hunting. Ever since she became her friend, Isuzu would use surveillance equipment of her own design to search the school for people who had potentially useful Quirks for Kaede to copy—emphasis placed on ones with defensive capabilities—and the three of them would spend their lunch break looking for the targets so Kaede could copy their Quirks. Most of the Quirks she copied at Barosa Elementary weren't much to write home about, but they became useful once she combined them into new Quirks, something Isuzu was more than happy to see. Sometimes Kaede felt that Isuzu was too obsessed with seeing what sort of combinations she could come up with, but at the same time, every new Quirk meant that her defense would get just a little bit better, so she wouldn't be one to complain.

If she could keep doing it unimpeded, she'd be invincible in no time.

* * *

"A cease and desist letter?!" were the words that came out of Isuzu's mouth one day when she and Risa were hanging out at Kaede's house.

"My parents got one from the school today. They said that I can't do anymore Quirk Hunting or I'll be expelled," Kaede said.

"Why would they do that?!"

"Mom and Dad said that the school was getting a lot of complaints from parents about someone attacking their kids and draining their energy like a vampire."

"That's completely—Wait, now that I think about it, that's sort of kind of exactly what we were doing, isn't it?" Isuzu asked. It was, and Kaede took offense to being called a vampire. It wasn't as if she was biting people to copy their Quirks. Not since confirming that that didn't work, at least.

"The letter also said that I was technically violating the laws about using Quirks in public without a license, and that was bad too. Am I a bad guy? I don't want to be a bad guy!" Kaede felt like crying, but Risa patting her on the head quickly put a stop to that.

"Feel better?" Risa asked. Kaede nodded her head. "That's good."

"This certainly puts a damper on things, though," Isuzu said. "If Kaede can't copy Quirks on school grounds anymore, it'll be all the harder for her to add to her inventory. And there were still so many people we had yet to look into. So many possible combinations that will never come to pass. What a shame!"

"Even worse, this means it'll be easier for me to get hurt!" Kaede said. "My defense won't get higher if I don't get more Quirks! I don't want a splinter, you guys!"

"At this point, I think the only things that could hurt you are far stronger than splinters."

"Like a thumbtack?!" She didn't even want to think about something so horrifying, yet Isuzu was making it happen.

"Come on, don't provoke her phobia like that, even if it _is_ all in her head!" Risa said.

"A little contradictory, aren't you?" Isuzu asked, earning her a glare from Risa. "Okay, I'm sorry. You know I'm on Team Kaede, just like you."

"No, not just like me. No one cares more about keeping Kaede happy than me, you know!" Risa stopped patting Kaede's head and backed away from her at the same time that Isuzu started wearing a big smile on her face. Kaede didn't get what was going on with that, and if it wasn't for the thumbtack thing, she might have put a little more thought into it.

"A-Anyway, we need a new plan for Kaede to get Quirks!" Risa said.

"True, true," Isuzu said. "Obviously, we have to go outside the school for this, but Kaede-chan just using her Quirk on random people on the streets would probably stir up the same problems."

At that moment, Kaede came up with an idea.

"What if it wasn't random?" Kaede asked. "What if, instead of us going to people, people came to us because we have something they want?"

"You want to sell Devour to people like we're running a lemonade stand?" Risa asked.

"Yeah!"

"I'm all up for doing things that can earn us money, but what would be the selling point of your Quirk?" Isuzu asked.

"A really good one!" Kaede was beaming with pride as she basked in the glow of her own brilliance.

"Can you tell us what it is?" Risa asked.

"Oh, right, I forgot that part." And she did tell them.

* * *

The next day, Kaede, Risa, and Isuzu made their way to the local park to put Kaede's plan in action. Risa planted a furled up flag she made herself, and to draw people's attention, Isuzu created a megaphone using a speaker, some batteries, and a megaphone.

"Would you care to do the honors, Risa-chan?" Isuzu asked. Risa nodded her head and Isuzu handed her the megaphone.

"Who here wants a Quirk Formulation session?!" Risa shouted into the megaphone. Some people ignored her, but about a dozen or so passersby stopped to listen to what she had to say. Phase One of Kaede's plan was complete.

"Little girl, what exactly do you know about that stuff?" a man in a suit asked.

"I know plenty! Quirk Formulation refers to when a man and a woman go see a Quirk specialist to try and determine what kind of Quirk their child might have."

"It's hardly a perfect process, of course," Isuzu said. "While scientists can make semi-accurate predictions of what a child's Quirk will be, technology hasn't progressed to the point of being able to perfectly predict how two Quirks will interact with each other."

"You're not seriously saying you _can _do that, are you?" a woman with the lower half of a horse asked.

"You bet we are, and it's all thanks to this girl right here!" Risa said, pointing a thumb at Kaede.

"Are you some sort of child genius, little girl?" asked a man with polka dots all over his body.

"I wish, but I still know what I'm doing," Kaede said. This brought them into Phase Two of the plan: actually telling people what they were doing. "My name is Kaede Honjo, and I have a Quirk called Devour. One touch from my shield will let me copy the Quirks of you and your significant other, and after that, I can combine them to see what kind of Quirk they'll combine into. Your kid's Quirk might just be one of yours, or they might even be Quirkless, but at least we here at Maple Tree Industries can do better than your doctor!"

With her speech completed, Kaede enacted Phase Three of her plan: unfurling Risa's flag to show the name of their business written in Risa's cute glitter paint. Of all the Phases, Phase Three was her favorite.

"How many tens of thousands of yen do you pay a guy who had to go to _college_ to just guess at this stuff? Leave it to us, and we'll only charge a thousand yen a couple!" Risa said.

"Or whatever food you might have on you. We're not too picky," Isuzu said.

"So who's first? Step right up and I'll give you a thorough examination!" Kaede said, patting her chest for emphasis. Now would be the beginning of Phase Four: people going along with the master plan.

"This is a scam, right?" one person asked.

"Even if that shield can copy Quirks, there's no way it can do something like make new Quirks out of them," another person said.

"What do a bunch of kids know about adult stuff like this, anyway? They're probably just saying random crap so they can earn money for some new All Might figmas," a third person said.

It wasn't working. Phase Four wasn't working, and Kaede didn't have a backup plan for that. It should have been foolproof, yet it was falling apart. Kaede couldn't stop herself from feeling nervous, and the looks on Risa and Isuzu's faces made it clear that they felt the same way. At the rate things were going, it would completely fail, and from that point, it would only be a matter of time before she was getting splinters.

"Just how far has society fallen that a child's earnest attempts of entrepreneurship go unappreciated?" a confident and dramatic voice cut through the crowd of naysayers. Everyone turned their heads as a pair of people made their way through the crowd. One half was a tall man holding a cane who bore a jacket sporting incredibly large collars and coattails, a purple scarf and gloves, and white hair that made its way into a fashionable mustache and beard combo. The other half was a small girl with long, red hair done up in pigtails wearing a white bow, white gloves, and a white and purple outfit that featured a variety of heart symbols.

"You wanna go along with this, man?" one person asked.

"And why shouldn't I? These children are trying to make their way in the world at such a young age, so the least we can do is reward their spirit by helping them onto the path of success!" the mustachioed man said. "Also, La Brava wants to try it out, so it's out of my hands."

"Because it's so exciting, Gentle!" the girl, La Brava, said. "Just think about it! If what they're saying is true, then we can know what kind of Quirk our future child will have! I'll love them even if they're Quirkless, but it'll still be great to know how our genes will mesh together!"

At that point, everyone in the crowd was staring at Gentle, with a few people pulling out their phones and dialing.

_Am I in the middle of a _Dateline_-type thing? _Kaede thought.

"Before anyone does anything they shouldn't do, I would like to point out that my wonderful assistant here is seventeen," Gentle said as sweat dripped down his brow. "More importantly, I have never once touched her in a sexual manner."

"It's true, he hasn't! Even though I keep trying super hard to get him in the mood," La Brava said.

"That sort of innuendo-esque statement might not be the best thing to say right now, La Brava!"

"Um, it's okay, I believe you!" Kaede said. "I don't think you're doing anything wrong, and even if you are, we're doing doctor stuff without actually being doctors, so who are we to judge, right?"

"I feel like someone should still be judging something, but probably not anyone here. You're fine with me," Risa said.

"Maple Tree Industries is a judgment-free zone, as of this moment," Isuzu said. The crowd started turning away from Gentle and La Brava and started looking at the members of Maple Tree Industries

"Thank you for your kind and helpful words, children," Gentle said with a bow. La Brava then pulled out a wrinkly thousand yen note with Gentle's face drawn over Dr. Noguchi's and handed it to Risa. "Now then, I believe we requested your services."

"Okay!" Kaede said. She stepped over to Gentle and La Brava and touched each of them with her shield to copy their Quirks. Gentle stumbled back a bit from the energy drain while La Brava somehow made herself jump up into Gentle's arms.

"Now for the main event. Elasticity plus Love equals Plastic Love!" One of the jewels on Kaede's shield vanished. The remaining one shimmered as a pink wave of light shot out from her chest that spread out for a few seconds before disappearing. When it faded away, Kaede, Risa, Isuzu, Gentle, and La Brava's bodies were all smooth and shiny, and Kaede's left arm seemed to be stretching down towards the ground.

"Whoa, the kid wasn't lying!" the man in the suit said.

"What's the new Quirk do?" asked the woman with the lower half of a horse.

"Plastic Love emits a wave of energy with a radius of about ten meters, and if someone you care about is hit by it, then their body becomes super stretchy, and that includes yourself. The more you care about someone, the stretchier they'll be and the longer the effect will last!" Kaede said.

"Oh my God, Gentle! Our baby's gonna have such an amazing Quirk!" La Brava said as she hugged Gentle.

"All in due time, La Brava," Gentle said. At that moment, the sound of police sirens filled the air. "Well, that's our cue to leave. Kaede Honjo and the rest of Maple Tree Industries, thank you ever so much for what you've shown us. If you ever find yourselves in trouble, know that this era's Wonder Man, Gentle Criminal, will be in your corner! Let us get together for a cup of tea, someday!" The ground underneath Gentle's feet went through a wave-like motion as he and La Brava were suddenly propelled into the air. Kaede stretched her head upwards to see a police car doing what it could to chase after them.

"Were those two Villains?" Isuzu asked.

"Maybe? They seem too silly to be threatening, if you ask me," Risa said.

"Hey kid, do us next! We're trying to have a baby, and we want to know what kind of Quirk they'll have!" a man said as he rushed over with his wife.

"My honey and I need to know if our baby will be a future Hero!" a woman said as she stepped over with her husband.

"I wanna know if I should stick with my boyfriend for the long haul or just dump his ass," a woman said, earning a dropped jaw from the man standing next to her. More and more people came over with similar comments, and within a matter of seconds, the crowd had more than tripled in size.

Phase Four was a rousing success.

"Okay, okay, one at a time! Seriously, don't crowd her, big numbers sometimes spook her," Risa said.

"Have your wallets out! It's first come, first serve!" Isuzu said. Both girls took advantage of Plastic Love to stretch their arms out into a barricade between Kaede and the crowd of people; Risa's armed stretched the furthest between the two, and she seemed embarrassed when Isuzu brought it up, for some reason.

Kaede didn't care, though. Her plan was back on track, and she even got a Quirk that could be used for defense. It was more or less the best she could ask for.

* * *

Maple Tree Industries quickly became a major success, or at least as major a success a business could be when the product only cost a person the price of a large coffee and a scone at Latte Larry's. Through simple word of mouth and some good social media management on Isuzu's part, everyone learned about the little girls who could tell you what Quirk your kid would have with perfect accuracy. Business would always be set up in the same park, only ever moving when some of the less lenient members of the police showed up, and they would keep at it until it either got too late in the day or Kaede had too many Quirks she didn't want to get rid of to make room for more. Regardless, she was accomplishing her mission of gathering as many Quirks as she could and making her defense as high as possible.

"And earning some money and the occasional meal while doing that isn't bad either, of course," Isuzu said as Risa counted the day's profits while she ate a corndog someone gave her.

"Especially with the new Gamesphere right around the corner," Risa said. "Kaede, you plan on spending your money on anything?"

"I don't know. I mean, charging people was your idea, so I don't really have a big need for it," Kaede said.

"Really? I was only doing this to see what kind of Quirks you could make, but I'm not turning down the profits, any time soon," Isuzu said as she ate a bag of jellybeans.

"I think I'm just happy making other people happy," Kaede said, earning a smile and a head nod from Risa. "Still, I wonder if there's a way to go a little further with it."

"Isn't it enough that we're giving them a service at a fraction of what licensed professionals charge?" Risa asked.

"Yeah, but this is only helping them in the future. I just want to know if Maple Tree Industries can do something for them in the present with all of the services it provides."

"I guess that'd be nice, but there's not really a whole lot you can do for a goal like that. Nothing I can think of, anyway. Still, if you come up with anything, Isuzu and I will be with you all the way." Isuzu nodded her head in agreement, the girl unable to give a verbal response as she ate a taco. That would be enough for Kaede at the moment, but she still wanted an opportunity to do some good in the present to present itself.

"Hey, you're the girls who do the matchmaking thing, right?" Kaede's attention was brought to a group of six people—five girls and one boy—wearing a uniform Kaede recognized as belonging to a junior high school a few train stops away.

"That's not the intended use, but yes," Risa said.

"Awesome! You totes gotta do it with me and Saito-kun!" said the girl who had long, black hair.

"No, it's gotta be Saito-kun and me!" said a girl with a short cut of brown hair.

"I'm way better for him!" said a girl with a long neck and a mouse-like face.

"H-Hey now. Let's all get along, girls," said the one boy in a sheepish tone. He had to be Saito, Kaede surmised, and he seemed to be quite the ladies man. It had to have been quite the achievement, considering that he didn't seem like all that interesting a guy, what with his bowl cut, nervous smile, and coke bottle glasses. Some people were just born lucky, she supposed.

"Saito-san, we can only do one pairing at a time, so you need to pick someone to do it with, already," Isuzu said.

"But I like them all too much to choose!" Saito said.

"Aww, you're so sweet!" said a girl with puffy blue hair and a pair of white feelers sticking out of her head. Three of the four other girls made similar comments, which led to another fight that Saito did a poor job of diffusing.

"Gross," was all Risa had to say about it.

"Okay, executive decision time!" Kaede said. "I, Kaede Honjo, will start with Saito-kun and, um, you! The one who hasn't talked at all!" Kaede pointed to a girl with messy blonde hair and bags under her eyes.

"Yay!" the girl said with a smile that showed off elongated canines.

"Himiko-chan's going first? No fair!" said the girl with the puffy blue hair. The other girls had similar comments, and Saito more or less just let it happen.

"This is so exciting, isn't it, Saito-kun?" Himiko asked with a smile. Saito barely gave a response as he handed Risa the money and Kaede used Devour to copy their Quirks.

"Huh?" Kaede asked as Himiko and Saito fell back a bit from the energy drain. "A Quirk where you have to drink blood to activate it?"

Himiko's left eyebrow twitched a little.

"You really _can _copy someone's Quirk! Sorry you had to start with something gross like Himiko-chan's!" the brown-haired girl said with a laugh.

"Yeah, what even _is _your Quirk, girl? Sure, Vlad King works with blood, too, but he doesn't have to drink it, or anything! I feel totes sorry for ya!" the long-haired girl said with a giggle.

"Yeah, I guess I drew the short end of the straw on that one. But if anyone's at fault, it's my stupid, stupid, stupid parents, right?" Himiko asked. She smiled and laughed along with the other girls, almost as if they were all in on the same joke.

It didn't feel that way to Kaede.

"Okay, so, here I go now," Kaede said. "Charm plus Transform equals Beautification!" One of the jewels on Kaede's shield vanished and another one shimmered red. Kaede pointed a finger at Risa and shot a red beam of light at her. It enveloped her body, and when it faded, Risa was a little taller with longer hair and slightly more muscle definition. "So the way Beautification works is that it lets you alter someone's appearance for a few minutes, but it can give you a bloody nose if you use it too much, and the changes are only in reference to what you find attractive."

"Oh? Is that right?" Isuzu asked.

"I'm already working out a bunch, but I guess I can grow out my hair more," Risa whispered. "I mean, neat!" The second statement was louder than the first.

"Wow, that's so cool! Himiko-chan, isn't it great that your baby might not have a Quirk as gross as yours?" asked the mouse-like girl.

"Totally!" Himiko said, her left eyebrow twitching again.

"The nosebleed is still pretty bad, but at least no one would have to actually drink blood!" the long-haired girl said with a laugh. Himiko and the rest of the girls laughed, but no one seemed to notice how Himiko's eyebrow kept twitching or how her fingernails dug a bit into her palm.

"You know, maybe it's not my place to say anything, but I don't think there's anything wrong with Himiko-san's Quirk," Kaede somehow managed to say, the statement killing the laughter in an instant.

"You don't?" Himiko asked. Her smile was no longer present, and her tone of voice sounded less chipper than before.

"Are you crazy? Did you forget about the part where she has to drink blood? There's nothing grosser than that! Right, Saito-kun?" the brown-haired girl said.

"I-I mean, it's not the most pleasant thing in the world—"

"See? Even Saito-kun thinks it's gross!"

"Is it that big a deal, though? Lots of Quirks do weird stuff, but we're supposed to accept them as just being a part of life. Why is Himiko-san's Quirk any different?"

"Because, well, because it just is, that's why! Look, we're not here to have some debate on morality, or whatever. Now it's my turn to—"

"Hey girls, I don't know if you saw it, but we passed a food truck selling those crepes we all like. Don't you think Saito-kun would want to share some with you all?" Himiko asked.

"Oh yeah, let's do that!"

"With everyone? But that's so much sugar!" Saito's protests were ignored as all the girls dragged him away from the scene. All the girls except Himiko, who said she was feeling tired and would catch up with them.

Something about the blank look on her face made Kaede feel nervous. Risa must have noticed, as she put her new tall and muscular body a little in front of her.

"Did you mean what you said? About how you don't think my Quirk is gross?" Himiko asked.

"Y-Yeah! I did! Just because you have to drink blood doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with it, after all," Kaede said. Himiko just stared at Kaede for a bit before her blank expression morphed into a toothy grin that stretched from ear to ear.

Kaede missed the blank expression.

"Exactly! So what if I have to drink blood and I like how it tastes and I like looking at things covered in tons of blood? There's nothing wrong with that. Nothing at all!"

"Well, parts of that, anyway," Isuzu said.

"No, it's _all_ good! Kaede-chan gets it, don't you, Kaede-chan?"

"Huh? U-Um, to each their own?" Kaede prayed that was the right thing to say.

"Yes, and to hell with anyone who says different!" Himiko laughed in a way that was different from her previous laugh. It sounded heavier and with more genuine emotion, for better or for worse. "You're the only one who's said anything like this, you know. My parents, my friends, even Saito-kun all think this stuff is gross, so they make me join in their little game of laughing at it like it—like _I'm _something so pitiable, but it sucks! It's like, this is just how I am, so why is it so funny to you people?!"

"That does sound pretty bad," Kaede said.

"It just makes me so mad, having to play along with their stupid little script all the time! Do you ever feel that way?"

"I think we all feel that way sometimes." Kaede truly felt that way.

"And doesn't it make you want to just stab people? That's how I feel all the time, and you know what? I'm gonna do it. I'm just gonna stab everyone in the fucking throat!"

"What, no!" Kaede truly felt that way.

"No? I thought you said you understood what I was saying."

"She did, right up until whatever this is supposed to be!" Risa said. Kaede could see Isuzu moving her fingers around in her coat pocket. She couldn't figure out what she was doing, but hopefully, it related to the clear and present danger in front of them.

"I don't get it. First, you say there's nothing wrong with me hating that I can't be myself, then you say I can't stab people. Why are you contradicting yourself, Kaede-chan?" Himiko asked.

"I'm not! It's just—Shouldn't there be a middle ground between forcing yourself to be something you're not and stabbing people?" Kaede asked. It felt like a question that didn't need to be asked, yet she was doing it, anyway.

And Himiko wasn't smiling, anymore.

"Oh, so that's how it is. You get me to open up and talk about how I really feel as if it'll mean anything, but it was all just a bunch of lies. Just a bunch of patronizing drivel you wanted to spew to make yourself feel like a good girl. It's just so easy for you to spew out all these empty platitudes, isn't it?"

"I didn't mean to—" Kaede stopped talking when Himiko pulled out a knife.

"Let's see how easy it is when you have to breathe through a tube!" Himiko lunged at Kaede with her knife, but Risa wasted no time in sending a kick to her jaw that knocked her onto her back.

"Stay behind me, Kaede!" Risa said. "Isuzu, call the police!"

"Already did," Isuzu said, pulling her phone out of her coat pocket. "I thought things might go this way, so I dialed 1-1-0 and had them listen in on this. They'll be here any minute."

"Um, guys—" Kaede was cut off by Himiko screaming as she jumped off the ground and charged forward. Isuzu threw a makeshift smoke grenade, but Himiko knocked it aside and it exploded away from her. Risa ran in with a pair of quick jabs, and while the first one hit, Himiko managed to dodge the second one just in time and rush past Risa, leaving no one between her and Kaede.

"From now on, this is what happens to all the people who try to keep me down!" Himiko said as she thrusted her knife at Kaede. Kaede closed her eyes and winced as she prepared for the worst, praying that the worst wouldn't be that bad.

The worst was apparently the blade of the knife breaking off against her skin, with Kaede not feeling a thing.

"What?" Kaede asked. "Did that really happen?"

"Kaede, are you all right?!" Risa asked.

"It would seem so, surprisingly," Isuzu said. Just then, Himiko pulled out another knife and tried to stab Kaede with it, but it also shattered.

"Guys, guys! Knives don't work on me! I'm knife proof! Being knife proof is a thing, and it's what I am!" Kaede said with a smile.

"Stop ignoring me!" Himiko said, pulling out a third knife that quickly met the same date as the other two.

"Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to. So about the stuff you said—" Himiko pulled out a fourth knife that quickly shattered.

"You better leave her alone before I—" Risa was cut off by the sound of a fifth knife breaking. "Huh."

"As I said, the police will be here soon, and Kaede-chan doesn't seem to be in danger, so we can relax, right?" Isuzu asked. After a few moments and a few more broken knives, Risa agreed and deactivated her Quirk.

"We're right here if things go pear-shaped, okay?"

"Okay!" Kaede said as another knife shattered against her face. "So Himiko-san, do you think we can—" Another knife broke against her face. "I really think we should—" Another knife broke against her face. "How many knives do you have on you?"

Himiko patted her uniform in desperation. That more or less answered the question.

"So now that we're done with that, can we—"

"Die!" Himiko jumped onto Kaede and wrapped herself around her as she started biting her head like a dog. Naturally, it had no effect on Kaede, so she just stood there while Himiko slobbered all over her face.

"If the knives didn't work, why does she think this will?" Risa asked. Isuzu shrugged her shoulders. At that point, Kaede's face was drenched in saliva, and there was only so much of that a girl could take.

"Okay, knock it off!" Kaede said. She tapped Himiko with her shield, copying her Quirk and draining her of enough energy to make her lose her grip and fall to the ground. "Himiko-san—"

"I don't want to hear it!" Himiko said. Kaede could hear police sirens in the distance. "You suck, Kaede-chan. You made me forget how things worked for a second, and now everything's ruined."

"No it's not! You didn't actually stab me or anything, so I'm sure that'll help you get off easy."

"That's not the point! Now everyone will know what I'm really like, and they're all going to hate me!" Himiko's angry screams turned into pained cries. "I didn't like having to be fake around everyone, but it was still nice to have _anyone_, you know? But that only worked because the Himiko they liked was a big faker. Now that's all gone and I'm not going to have anyone. Because no one's okay with the real me."

"I'm okay with it," Kaede said.

"What?" Himiko asked.

""What?"" Risa and Isuzu asked.

"I mean, I'm not a fan of all the stabbing stuff, obviously, but I wasn't lying before. It's fine to be who _you _want to be, not who other people want you to be. Even if these people think the real you is creepy, I'm sure that one day, you'll meet lots of people who are fine with the real you. For right now, though, you've got a friend in me!" Kaede puffed out her chest with pride, though on the inside, she honestly felt a little nervous. This was her first time giving an inspiring speech of hope, so she was worried that it would either be too cheesy or not cheesy enough.

Himiko, still crying, sat up and hugged Kaede's legs. It was safe to say that it worked.

* * *

The police arrived on the scene at about the same time that Himiko's friends finally returned. The girls just looked confused by the sight in front of them, but Saito gave an empty speech about how Himiko should have told them that something was wrong in the name of their friendship. Himiko, to the surprise of the girls, just brushed him off as annoying. Himiko was then taken away by the police, but not before thanking Kaede for accepting the real her. Kaede was happy to hear it and told Himiko that she hoped she could see her again soon.

"So they put her in an asylum?" Risa asked in the science lab a week after their encounter with Himiko.

"That's what that police officer said when he called me," Kaede said. "It sounds like they're going to help her be more comfortable with being herself in a way that, you know, doesn't involve stabbing people."

"We certainly want to avoid that," Isuzu said as she ate a sandwich Kaede brought her.

"Either way, I hope I get to see her again. I think she can be a good person if she tries, you know?" Kaede asked.

"If you say so," Risa said. "You know, I never got around to asking you, Kaede, but how'd it feel to give someone help they could use right away instead of who knows when?"

"It felt great! This is definitely what it feels like to be a real Hero, and I wanna do it again! I think. It was kind of scary, after all. Well, it'd probably be fine, I guess."

"The perks of being indestructible."

"No, the perks of having you to protect me." Risa spat out a bit of her drink. "Isuzu-chan, too." Risa seemed to recompose herself a bit after that.

"You know, it's an important life skill to know when to stop talking," Isuzu said with a smile.

"No, it isn't!" Risa said. A part of Kaede felt like she was missing something, but another part felt like it wasn't that important.

Either way, she was just happy for her halcyon days of yore.

* * *

**Name: Kaede Honjo**

**Quirk: Devour**

***Creates an indestructible shield that attaches itself to her left hand. If Kaede is ever more than a meter than a half away from her shield, either the shield will be teleported to her hand or she'll be teleported to the shield.**

***Holding the shield causes Kaede's natural defense to increase and make certain attacks painless. The boost in defense increases as Kaede increases the number of Quirks she copied.**

***If the shield makes contact with a Quirk user, their energy will be drained and Kaede will obtain a copy of their Quirk, along with complete knowledge of how it works. Once she has copied ten Quirks, all new Quirks are sent into an "inventory" for later use.**

***When Kaede falls asleep for at least one hour, all of the Quirks in her shield are taken out and put into her inventory. Kaede is then free to install as many Quirks as she wants into her shield, and she can keep taking Quirks from her inventory over the course of the day until the first time she reaches ten Quirks.**

***Copied Quirks can only be activated by saying their name out loud. In addition, Kaede can combine her Quirks into new ones. Quirks used for this are immediately erased and have to be copied again to be usable.**

***Kaede's Active Quirks:**

****Alchemy(Isuzu Haganeno)**

****Transform(Himiko Toga)**

***Quirks in Inventory:**

****Long Neck(Random kid)**

****Muscle Growth(Random kid)**

****Glamour(Random kid)**

****Earphone Jack(Random kid)**

****Longevity(Kyudai Garaki)**

****Bouncy Laser(Sugiko Honjo)**

****Stretchy Fingers(Friend of pomeranian boy)**

****Puffy Cheeks(Random kid)**

****Rock Fist(Random kid)**

****Hair Extension(Random kid)**

****Nitro Wings**

****High-Speed Portal Cutter**

****Shield(Crust)**

****Top Gear(Risa Shiramine)**

****Burning Letters(Shy)**

****Gas(Spirits)**

****Restaurering(Lady Black)**

****Sleeping Strike(Meng Long)**

****Big Step(Rapid Rabbit/Big Sis Hayate)**

****Stinger(Honey Trap/Big Sis Hani)**

****Tape(Random kid)**

****Triple Spark**

****Lizard Tail Splitter(Random kid)**

****Plastic Love**

****Centaur(Random customer)**

****Minotaur(Random customer)**

****Leap(Pop Step)**

****Slide and Glide(The Hauler)**

****Earth Flow(Pixie-Bob)**

****Gatling(Gunhead)**

****Lip Service(Random customer)**

****Book Maker(Random customer)**

****Angry Umbrella(Random customer)**

****Duto Dodge(Random customer)**

****Beautification**

****Etcetera, etcetera**

***Discarded Quirks:**

****Explosion(Pomeranian boy)**

****Wings(Friend of pomeranian boy)**

****Knives Out(Matsuda Honjo)**

****Warp(Kurogiri)**

****Spark(Random kid)**

****Matchstick(Random kid)**

****Lighter(Random kid)**

****Elasticity(Gentle Criminal)**

****Love(La Brava)**

****Charm(Saito)**

****Etcetera, etcetera**

*****Updates on all information pending.**

**Name: Isuzu Haganeno**

**Quirk: Alchemy**

***Allows Isuzu to either repair broken machinery or combine pieces of machinery into a new device.**

***To create new machinery, Isuzu must have a clear image of what she wants to create in her head and how it can be created.**

***Alchemy does not work on organic beings and cannot be used to revive the dead.**

****Updates on all information pending**

* * *

**Well this certainly took off.**


	3. Zoology

The smell of chemicals and burning metal burned against Rapid Rabbit's nostrils. She'd spent over a decade working as a Hero and had come across it time and time again, but it was still a scent that always made her want to gag. If she knew she'd be dealing with it, she would have brought the good nose plugs from home as Honey Trap had told her.

It had seemed that she had underestimated Nedzu's potential for carnage.

"Tell me, Rapid Rabbit, what do you see around us?" Nedzu asked as he skipped over a broken operation table.

"The destroyed remains of the Villain lab we just took down?" Rapid Rabbit wasn't sure how else to answer.

"You'd be right to say that, but at the same time, you'd be wrong. What I see around us isn't mere destruction, but long-overdue vengeance. Vengeance over the people who had to slice and dice every nook and cranny of my body to make me who I am; vengeance against the people who thought the cries of one helpless animal didn't mean anything; vengeance against the people who continued to hurt even more helpless animals after that, even when they were offering the same cries for help. Yes, it took a while to map out their relocation patterns and trap them here, but if anything, the long wait just made it all the more worthwhile."

"R-Right." Rapid Rabbit was trying her best to take him seriously, she really was, but between the continual odor of spilled chemicals and the surrealism of such a serious speech coming out of such a cute and tiny body made it an arduous task.

"Well, that's enough about me for now. We still have business to take care of, and we can't do it just by talking. Well, not if I'm the only one to talk, anyway." With that, they had walked enough to rejoin the other Heroes in the central area of the laboratory where the scientists in charge were being restrained by one of their partners.

"Not gonna lie, you sure gave us a run for our money," Hawks said, his feathers floating right in front of their faces. "A base this size with this many people in it? With a team like this, I could usually take it down in ten minutes, but you managed to drag it out for twelve. Not bad, not bad at all."

"Shut your mouth, you dog!" one of the scientists shouted. Hound Dog naturally responded to that by growling at him, and that quickly shut him up.

"Thank you for that; I would have done it, but I don't think it would have had the same effect," Nedzu said. Rapid Rabbit agreed with that, but now she really wanted to see it in action. "Now then, obviously you're going to give us the location of any of your bases we didn't hit yet and any associates who might have called in sick today, but my main concern is the animals."

"I'm doing a good job keeping an eye on them, aren't I?" The one who asked the question was Honey Trap, who was currently having dogs and cats and anteaters and other adorable animals running around and against her. It was very cute; Rapid Rabbit wished she could just spend all day watching her wife frolic with animals.

"You're doing great, Honey, but the problem is that the numbers don't add up. Before the raid, I hacked into their servers and learned how many animals were currently being tortured and abused, and by my count, you should be playing with two more animals right now."

"There's more cuteness I'm missing out on?!"

"What? Am I not enough for you, Senpai?" Hawks asked.

"You're too scruffy."

"I am?" Hawks rubbed at his beard, a bit.

"You could use a shave, but more importantly, where are the last two animals?" Nedzu asked.

"As if I'd tell a fucking rat like you!" Nedzu pulled out a gun and jammed it into his mouth.

"What about a rat with a gun in your mouth? Would you tell him?" The scientist started saying something, but it was muffled out by the aforementioned gun; once again, the surrealism of someone so cute doing something so serious made it hard to take it seriously. "That's a good degenerate scientist." Nedzu pulled his gun out of the man's mouth and took a step back.

"A few days ago, two of the animals escaped the facility. Some idiot forgot to close the cage for one of them, it broke one of its buddies loose, and they snuck away when we weren't looking. We don't know where the hell they are now, okay?!"

"Yes, very much so." Nedzu jumped up and struck the man in the face with his gun; he lost consciousness by the time he landed on the ground; it was a very adorable sight. "Okay, the police will be here in a moment to cart these people off, but our job isn't done yet. Not until we find those last two animals and make sure every one of them ends up in a nice home with a loving caretaker."

Rapid Rabbit and the others agreed without hesitation. There was no reason not to, not when the safety of cute little animals was involved.

It was at that moment that she realized that there was one person who would have loved to be part of this, if only for the animals.

* * *

"Gum's gotten mintier lately. Have you noticed that?" Kaede asked Risa as they walked home together from Arusaka Junior High.

"Has it?" Risa asked.

"Definitely! Last time I chewed some, it felt like I was brushing my teeth with a candy cane! I felt so clean that I didn't even brush my teeth that night."

"Please brush your teeth twice a day, Kaede."

"But the gum works! There's science involved, I think."

"No there isn't. Besides, you can't be a proper Hero without good dental hygiene."

"What if I just made a Quirk that gives me perfect teeth all the time?"

"Actually make a Quirk like that, then we'll talk." Kaede didn't know how serious Risa was, but a deal was a deal, nonetheless. Now she just needed to figure out what Quirks needed to be combined into something like that. She already had a few different Quirks that could make a person smell good, but she probably needed something that could make things be healthy beyond surface level to deal with cavities, and also something to keep things straight to prevent braces.

"Risa, did you hear something?" All of that would have to wait while she dealt with a mysterious rustling.

"Hear what?"

"I heard something in the bushes over there." Kaede pointed to the park on their left, and a moment later, a few bushes by the trees started shaking.

"There must be something in there," Risa said. "Wanna check it out?" Kaede fervently nodded her head and the two headed for the bushes, now in the middle of a third rustling.

"What do you think's in there?"

"Don't know. Probably just a squirrel, but if it's making this much noise, it must be doing something cool, right?"

"Let's find out!" Kaede opened up the bush to reveal the source of the sound. The source ended up not being a squirrel as Risa has predicted, but it was something far better: a small turtle and a small fox. "Oh my God, they're so cute! Risa, look at how cute they are!"

"I've only ever seen one thing cuter than this." Kaede would have asked her what could have been cuter, but she was too enamored with the sight before her. At the same time, the animals had started to take notice of them; the turtle seemed to smile at them, but the fox jumped in front of it and started growling.

"Don't be scared; we're not here to hurt you or your friend. But now that we're all here, let's get to know each other. My name's Kaede." The fox jumped up and bit down on Kaede's neck. "This is my best friend Risa. I've got another friend named Isuzu, but she's at the dentist right now." Naturally, Kaede was unfazed by this.

"This guy's kind of feisty," Risa said as the fox tried to bite down harder to no avail.

"Kind of like you, Risa." The fox kept increasing its grip around Kaede's neck, but Kaede remained unfazed. The turtle then started crying at the fox, as if it was making some sort of plea.

"Okay, that's enough of that." Risa pulled the fox off of Kaede's neck; there wasn't even a small scratch there.

"I won't mind if you do, but please don't bite me," Kaede told the turtle. The turtle let out a cry and waddled over to Kaede, Kaede then wasting no time petting its shell. "It's so smooth! Risa, how's the fox's fur feel?"

"Pretty soft. Weird that its fur is white, 'cause I don't think it has the right eye color to be an albino. There's something peeking through the fur on its neck, too. It almost looks like—Hey!" The fox bit Risa's hand, causing her to drop it. It jumped at Kaede, but Risa grabbed it and forced it to the ground. "Look, we're sorry we bothered you, and you've clearly been through something bad, but Kaede's not going to hurt your friend, so stop trying to hurt her, already!"

"Yeah! I'm a nice girl who likes petting cute turtles. What's wrong with that?" Kaede asked. The turtle started crying at the fox again, and the fox responded with yips at the turtle. They went back and forth on it as if they were holding a conversation with each other. Eventually, the fox let out a soft yup before squeezing out of Risa's arms and nodding its head at Kaede.

"I think it's apologizing."

"No hard feelings!" Kaede said with a smile. The turtle cried out again before waddling over to the fox and rubbing its head against its fur. "This is so cute!"

"It'd be a little cuter if they weren't so dirty. You two want us to give you a bath?" The turtle let out a happy cry while the fox let out a reserved yip. In short, the two animals were willing to go home with Kaede and Risa.

The day was slowly turning into the greatest of days.

* * *

Upon entering Kaede's home, she and Risa quickly drew a bath for the animals. Kaede felt disappointed when Risa talked her out of the idea of the two of them getting in the bath with them, but getting to scrub them down was still fun.

"That mark on the fox's forehead is still there, so it must be a birthmark or something," Risa said as they dried off the animals in the living room. "Well, it looks cool, so I guess it's fine."

"That's the spirit!" Kaede said. "And now that they're nice and dry… Slipknot!" One of the three jewels on Kaede's shield shone brightly as she activated a Quirk. A second later, Kaede produced a small, Shinto-esque red and white rope from her hand and handed it to Risa. Risa then took the rope and quickly wrapped it around the fox's neck as a sort of collar. The fox put a paw to it with a dazed look.

"You must be pretty sensitive about your neck, so I thought you'd like something that could keep people from touching it and still look pretty cool. What do you think?" Risa asked. The fox stared at Risa for a few seconds before letting out a joyful yip and nuzzling its head against her chest. "Looks like he likes it."

"All right! Now we both have happy pets!"

"Yeah—Wait, pets?"

"That's where this is going, isn't it? I don't think these guys have a real home, anyway. Besides, I already asked our parents about it, and they all sent back thumbs-up emojis."

"You asked my parents if I could have a pet fox for me? And they said yes?"

"It was easy once I told them how adorable they both were," Kaede said, cradling the turtle in her arms.

"Can't argue with that," Risa said while hugging the fox. "So, you wanna come live with us?" The turtle and the fox let out sounds that Kaede took as an agreement on their part.

"Yay! Welcome to the family, Syrup!"

"'Syrup'?"

"That's the turtle's name because of the 'maple' you get from my name." The newly-christened Syrup let out a joyful as he rubbed his head against Kaede.

"Oh, that's nice, I should do that, too. You only get 'sand' from 'Risa', but you get 'white' from 'Shiramine', just like your fur. Clouds are white, too, so how about 'Oboro'?"

"Oh, like that one guy?"

"Oh yeah. Still a good name, even if it isn't completely original." The fox let out a joyful yip. Oboro it was, then. "Your cousins are coming by soon to take us shopping, right? We should probably feed these guys before they show up."

"On it!" Kaede put Syrup down and headed for the kitchen, her shield moving away from the wall and back into her hand as she did. She quickly returned with a head of lettuce for Syrup and a bowl of raw chicken for Oboro. While Syrup happily went at the lettuce, Oboro only took a few bites of the chicken before spitting it up.

"Maybe it's too cold for him?" Risa asked; Oboro nodded his head in response.

"Don't animals eat their food raw?" Kaede asked.

"I guess my guy has some refined taste. Let's see if you have anything already cooked we can heat up for him."

Before Kaede and Risa could head into the kitchen, a stream of fire shot out of Oboro's mouth. The two of them just stared in silence as the fire kept flowing out until Oboro stopped it and started eating a bowl of fully cooked chicken.

"He breathes fire!" Kaede said.

"I know!" Risa said.

"Oboro has a Quirk!"

"I know!"

"That's amazing! Isuzu-chan said that animals with Quirks are super rare. What are the odds that we'd actually find one?"

"You'd think it'd be better than the odds of finding two, but here we are." Kaede didn't understand what Risa was talking about, but then she pointed up and directed her attention towards the ceiling. It was there that she saw Syrup floating in the air, happily eating a piece of lettuce.

"Syrup, you're flying!" Syrup floated back down to Kaede, and Kaede waved a hand above his shell. "No strings, either! It's super legit!"

"That's awesome! You guys are awesome!" Oboro let out a yip before shooting a stream of fire into the air while Syrup did a mid-air somersault, both actions done in a well-deserved celebration. Kaede would have been happy just having a normal pet turtle in someone as cute as Syrup, and she was sure that Risa would have been satisfied with a regular fox for a pet, but this just served to make them even greater companions.

Kaede wanted to keep fawning over Syrup, but as the door rang, she was obligated to open it. The act ended up raising her mood even further though, for the people at the door were a pair of women with matching wristwatches and wedding rings, one with black hair dressed in a plain-looking shirt and denim skirt with a fluffy cottontail poking out of her backside, the other a bespectacled brunette in a pantsuit who had large needles protruding out of the top of her wrists.

"Hayate! Hani! You're here!" Kaede jumped up and put two in a hug.

"Oh, looks like someone missed—" Hayate stopped talking when Kaede's shield touched her and Hani, Devour immediately draining some of their energy and making copies of their Quirks.

"Oh, sorry. I forgot that I finally got around to fusing your Quirks the other day."

"What kind of Quirk would our baby have? Tell me, tell me, please tell me!" Hani had a wild look in her eyes, the same one she always got when an opportunity to be lovey-dovey with Hayate presented itself.

"I can show you after we go shopping." Hani pumped her fist into the air.

"Good idea," Hayate said. "If you told Hani now, she'd get so overwhelmed that she'd—what is that?" At some point, Syrup had floated back over to Kaede.

"Oh yeah, you don't even know! This is my new pet Syrup, a flying turtle!" Kaede said right before Syrup touched down on her head.

"I-Is that so?" Hani asked, miraculously broken out of her stupor.

"It is so. There's something else, too." Kaede led Hayate and Hani into the living room where Risa was quick to greet them. "That's Risa's new pet Oboro, a fire-breathing fox!"

"Y-You don't say," Hayate said.

"I do say," Kaede said. "Syrup, Oboro, this is my cousin, Hayate, and her wife, Hani. They're super fun!"

"They're also Pro Heroes. Hayate's the Big Foot Hero, Rapid Rabbit, and Hani's the Piercing Blow Hero, Honey Trap," Risa said. "I guess that doesn't really matter to you two, but hey, no reason to keep you guys out of the loop." Syrup let out a cry and Oboro let out a yip.

"Aren't they just the cutest?" Hayate and Hani stammered out an agreement, both looking and sounding equally strange, for some reason. If Kaede had to guess, she'd say that they were just surprised to have something so adorable thrown in their faces all of a sudden.

Something like that was perfectly understandable.

* * *

Before the scientists of the Animal Farm were taken off to jail, Hayate and Hani Honjo, also known as Rapid Rabbit and Honey Trap, were told to keep an eye out for the two animals that had gone missing. After some more probing of the scientists, they were able to learn the identities of the two animals and some of their defining physical characteristics.

One was a turtle that had the power to fly, and the other was a white fox that could breathe fire.

Of all the times for them to be on the opposite end of Kaede's incredible luck.

Hayate wasn't even sure how they convinced Kaede and Risa to take the animals with them on their shopping trip, and she definitely wasn't sure what she and Hani were going to do now. As they went clothes shopping around town and Hayate told Kaede about how her old partner Rumi finally started her own agency, she couldn't stop thinking about how she had no idea where to go from here.

"Oh, Kaede, check out this top," Risa said, holding up a frilly black blouse in front of her.

"That's nice, but can we get something that has an animal on it?" Kaede asked.

"Sweetie, you're in eighth grade now. You have to start dressing at least a little more mature," Hani said.

"Okay, but if I see a shirt with a turtle on it, I'm buying it to match with Syrup." The turtle let out a cry from atop Kaede's head.

"If you're doing that, I guess I gotta keep my eye out for a fox shirt for Oboro," Risa said, the fox letting out a yip from atop Risa's head.

"H-Hey, how about Hani and I watch the little critters while you two go try on what you have?" Hayate asked.

"Okay. Don't have too much fun with them without us," Kaede said. She and Risa put the animals down on a bench and headed for the changing rooms. The two animals looked up at Hayate and Hani with innocently adorable eyes, as if they were going out of their way to make things even harder for them.

"Hayate, what's the plan here? Do we just grab them and run?" Hani whispered.

"We can't do that!" Hayate whispered back.

"Well we have to do something, right? Our mission is to find the missing animals and bring them to Nedzu, and we've done at least one of those things."

"But we can't just up and do the other one. You saw how attached the girls are to them. If they go missing, then Kaede will get sad. And if she gets sad, then she'll start to cry. And if she starts crying, then _I'll_ start crying."

"I'd rather die than let that happen," Hani said without hesitation.

"So we need to get the animals away from Kaede and Risa in a way that doesn't upset them."

"How do we do that, though?" Once again, Hayate was at a loss, and all the while, the animals did nothing to stop themselves from looking cute. Dealing with X and the Antinoids was nothing compared to this.

"Hayate, Hani, what do you think of this?" Without her realizing it, Kaede and Risa had returned from the changing rooms wearing outfits to show off.

"You two—You look great," Hayate said.

"Super great," Hani said.

"Thanks! You know Risa, I think that blue jacket would actually go well with that one skirt. Let's check it out," Kaede said. She grabbed Risa's hand and dragged her back to the changing room, once again leaving them alone with the animals.

This was the hardest task Hayate had ever dealt with in her Hero career.

* * *

Kaede always had fun hanging out with Hayate and Hani. They always did nice stuff like taking her out to do something fun when they were free and her parents were at work or helping her with her homework whenever it was too hard for her, and whenever they fought about something, it was resolved in no time at all with a series of warm hugs. Kaede didn't have any problems with growing up an only child, if only because Risa had been there basically from the start, but she couldn't help but imagine that this was what it felt like to have sisters.

"Are you guys all right? You've been kind of spacey today." As such, it was easy for Kaede to notice when something was off about them.

"Yeah, we're fine. Just, you know, work and whatnot," Hayate said while they all are ice cream on a bench, with Hayate barely touching hers.

"What's the whatnot here?" Risa asked.

"We had to take some stuff home with us, and trying to finish it has become a pain," Hani said, barely eating the spoonfuls Hayate fed her.

"That sounds rough. I wish I could do something to help," Kaede said while feeding Syrup a piece of banana.

"You and Risa are doing enough, already."

"Because of our positive outlook on life?" Hani nodded her head.

"Good for us, I guess," Risa said while giving Oboro a good pet.

"Yep. Good for you," Hayate said. It really was good for them; Kaede couldn't help but think that as Hayate's phone started buzzing. "Ah, it's work." Hayate looked at her phone for a second before putting it back in her pocket. "Hani and I gotta go behind a building across the street because reasons. Be back in a minute." Kaede smiled while waving to Hayate and Hani as they walked across the street.

"It sucks that we couldn't find any good animal shirts," Kaede said as she fed Syrup some more bananas.

"Just be patient. I'm sure we'll find something," Risa said while petting Oboro.

"I sure hope so." While Kaede happily fed fruit to Syrup, she caught sight of the sky and noticed how dark the sky was getting. It certainly explained why the streets were relatively empty in the middle of a weekday. She hoped they wouldn't get caught in the rain. Hayate's suit could protect her, but Hani would get drenched either way. Her shield could be a good umbrella if she really tried, though.

"How does it feel to mess around with things that don't belong to you?" All of a sudden, right in front of Kaede and Risa was a man wrapped in red bandages wearing military gear with a sword strapped to his back. Kaede didn't know how he snuck up on them, and she wasn't sure if she wanted to find out.

"We paid for the ice cream fair and square. I've even got a receipt."

"Not that. I mean, of course, _those_," the bandaged man said, pointing to Syrup and Oboro. Both of them looked a bit frightened, and Risa wasted no time shooting him a glare. "You see, those little critters don't belong to you, and I'm being paid big bucks to bring them back home, so how about you help a guy out and hand them over?"

"I don't think they want to go with you, though." Syrup and Oboro shook their heads in agreement.

"Little girl, that wasn't a request. You handing them over is us doing things the easy way. I don't mind doing things the hard way—that's why I use the red bandages—but I'd rather avoid doing that, wouldn't you?"

"Risa, we should get Hayate and Hani, right?"

"We really should," Risa said.

"Hard way it is, then. Hope you know that I'm only going to enjoy this about—" As the bandaged man started to unsheathe his sword, Risa, her body bathed in a blue aura, jumped up and head-butted him in the face, knocking him onto the ground. She must have activated her Quirk the second he showed up for it to already be at its second level; good thinking on her part.

"Get on!" Risa crouched down and Kaede climbed onto her back, Syrup and Oboro perching themselves on her shoulders.

"To Hayate and Hani!" Kaede said as Risa started running.

"You're not going anywhere!" the bandaged man said. His bandages shot off of his body and wrapped themselves around trees and parked cars. Once they were completely wrapped up, yellow eyes and stubby legs sprouted from them and they charged at Risa. "How's this?! You brats better throw in the towel if you don't—"

"Seiryu!" A jewel on Kaede's shield glowed brightly as one of her Quirks activated. In an instant, half a dozen blue, serpentine dragons sprouted out of her back and charged at the bandaged man's minions; it only took a few seconds for the dragons to destroy them.

"What the hell?!" The bandaged man created another minion out of the bench they were sitting on a moment ago and used it as a steed to chase after them. Kaede launched the dragons at him again, but it appeared that he was able to figure out her patterns and dodge them. It only took a moment for him to close the gap between them and swing his sword down at them.

The Risa he ended up slashing, however, melted away into nothing, along with her companions. Before the bandaged could properly react, they were already behind him.

"Take this!" Risa, the aura around her having gotten more intense, punched the bandaged man in the face the second he turned around and sent him flying.

"Heel Stinger!" Kaede said, activating another Quirk the second she put Syrup and Oboro down on the ground. Hayate's Big Step allowed her to jump to incredible heights and kick with incredible strength, and Hani's Stinger allowed her to produce needles that, in addition to being powerful weapons, could inject someone with a paralyzing agent. Heel Stinger was Hayate's Quirk with Hani's Quirk sticking out of the heels, and she used that to jump at the bandaged man while he was in mid-flight to kick him in his back while also injecting him with said paralyzing agent.

"Nice one, Kaede!" Risa said as he fell to the ground.

"I was only able to do that because of your Empty Shell technique. You're the awesome one here!" Kaede said.

"Yeah, well, you know." There seemed to be a bit of pink in Risa's aura as it died down and faded away. "Anyway, the guy's out cold, so let's get your cousins to book him."

"Right! I think they went—" At that moment, the sky exploded with the sound of thunder and a flash of lightning. A torrent of rain came about in little over a second, and a powerful wind blew everyone over. Kaede and Risa barely managed to catch Syrup and Oboro as they fell to the ground.

And Risa barely regained her footing to get everyone out of the way of another bandaged beast.

"Good thing I wore the extra sturdy vest today. Thanks to that, I still have a modicum of feeling," the bandaged man said with a deranged laugh. Kaede was ready to activate Seiryu again, but before she could, the bandaged man's bandages came around from behind, wrapped around Risa's ankles, and lifted her into the air. Kaede, Syrup, and Oboro fell off her in the process, but while Syrup and Oboro fell to the ground, Kaede soon found herself similarly wrapped up.

"Kaede!" Risa called out as a bandaged beast raised a fist to her head.

"Don't even think about doing whatever the hell it is you do, shield girl. Not unless you want to watch your friend's brains drain out into the sewers," the bandaged man said as he limped over to Kaede with his sword drawn. "This was supposed to be a simple job to give me a nice and easy paycheck. If I knew a couple of brats would give me such a headache, I would have gone with that pretty boy hobo when he asked me to join his crew. Can't change the past, though, gotta keep moving forward, and you know how I'll do that?" The bandaged man levied his sword right at Kaede's throat. "By taking my time to gut you nice and slowly."

It was at that moment that Syrup flew into the air at an angle and tackled the bandaged man in the face.

"Syrup, don't!" Kaede cried.

"Why, you little—" The bandaged man moved to grab Syrup, but before he could, Oboro spat a ball of fire into his back.

"Oboro, get out of here!" Risa shouted.

"Fuck it. I hope those guys are into taxidermy!" The bandaged man swung his sword at Syrup. It should have been a clean hit, but for some reason, the sword went right through him. At the same time, a second Syrup flew in from behind and tackled him in the back.

"Syrup has a brother?" Kaede asked. Risa shook her head and pointed at Oboro, whose eyes were glowing white as copies of Syrup and himself appeared out of nowhere and repeatedly assaulted the bandaged man. Oboro was a fox, so Kaede assumed that it was some sort of illusion, meaning that breathing fire wasn't all his Quirk could do. She'd spend more time thinking about how cool that was if they weren't in such a dire situation. Regardless, it was clear that they were able to handle things surprisingly well.

"Wait, isn't he distracted now?" Risa asked.

"Oh, yeah!" With that, Kaede used Seiryu once again to destroy the bandages ensnared around her and Risa and destroy the bandaged beast that was threatening Risa. The two fell to the ground, and Risa pulled Kaede into a bit of a tight hug as she pulled her up.

"Oh my God, what the hell even is this?!" the bandaged man asked as the multiple Syrups and Oboros kept hitting him. A second later, Oboro's eyes stopped glowing and the copies vanished. The bandaged man laughed, most likely because he assumed that Oboro had gotten too exhausted to keep it up, but when Syrup cried out, large vines sprouted out from the ground, wrapped themselves around the bandaged man, and tossed him high into the air.

In all likelihood, Oboro just wanted his friend to have the finishing blow.

"Go Syrup, go! Headbutt him right into the stratosphere!" Kaede cheered. That didn't happen though. What ended up happening, surprisingly, was Syrup spontaneously growing to giant proportions—at least ten times his original size, if Kaede had to guess—and firing a laser beam from his mouth at the bandaged man. The beam was so massive and so powerful that the force of the attack even managed to split the clouds and end the rainstorm. The sun started shining again with a radiance that made it hard to believe it had ever rained; it was an incredible sight to behold, one that left Kaede and Risa in awe.

If only Syrup hadn't completely missed his target.

"God! Dammit!" The bandaged man fell to the ground and struggled to stand back up. "What the hell is this? What the hell even are you? Would it kill you to just die, already?!"

"Can we weigh in on this one?" The one who asked that wasn't Kaede or Risa, nor was it Syrup or Oboro—with what had just happened, she wouldn't have put it past them, and she would have loved it if that had happened. Instead, the one who said it was a woman in form-fitting silver armor with red and blue accents, antennae vaguely resembling rabbit ears, and a cottontail poking out of her backside.

"I'd very much like to give an opinion." The second person to speak stood next to the armored woman wearing an insectoid helmet and pair of wings—the helmet being adorned with a large heart symbol—along with armor around her biceps and little else in the way of coverage aside from a thong, metal plating on the top half of her breasts, and belts running across her torso and legs. Both of them had appeared behind the bandaged man seemingly out of nowhere, and the sight of them both brought a smile to Kaede's face.

A smile that grew even wider a second later from the sight of her cousins alternating between kicks and stings to finally beat the bandaged man into unconsciousness.

"Are you two okay?!" Hani asked, dashing over to Kaede and Risa with incredible speed and looking over every nook and cranny of their person. "We're so sorry you had to deal with that! It's great that you could and everything, but we're still sorry!"

"It's fine. Sadly, this isn't the first time someone's tried to kill us, so I think we're getting used to it," Risa said.

"Please don't tell Uncle Matsuda about this, Kaede! Pretty please? I'll buy you all the turtle shirts you want, just please don't make him yell at me!" Hayate cried.

"Let me think about it," Kaede said, her hand pressed against her chin in contemplation. After a few seconds of that, she walked over to the unconscious bandaged man, touched him with her shield, and instantly gained a copy of his Quirk. "I'll see what I can do."

"Thank you, thank you, thank you!" Hayate hugged Kaede and hopped over to Risa and Hani to make it a group hug. Oboro jumped on top of Risa's head and let out a yelp, and Syrup—still giant-sized—let out a massive cry before nuzzling everyone with his head and knocking them down to the ground.

Another good day in the life of Kaede Honjo.

* * *

As Hayate and Hani stood on a still-drenched rooftop, a single thought crossed Hayate's mind: this was the end of Rapid Rabbit and Honey Trap. They were going to lose their jobs, their office would get closed down, and the two of them would either end up on the street or forced to move back in with Hayate's parents; the street was marginally the better option.

"This has been quite the day, hasn't it, Senpai? I'm still kinda new at this, so you gotta tell me if you veterans are always getting into these kinds of messes," said Hawks, the one who started all of this. No, Hayate knew that wasn't right. It wasn't his fault they were shopping in the middle of his patrol route and got spotted with Syrup and Oboro. He didn't even rat them out to Nedzu; he called them over and asked for an explanation, and the rest of the team didn't get involved until after the mercenary Hoyo Makihara—also known as "Mummy"—was dealt with.

"This isn't funny! None of this is funny!" Of course, just because Hawks was cool about it didn't mean everyone was, as Hound Dog's snarling had shown. "Because of how careless you two were, those kids almost got killed! You put your cousin and her girlfriend in mortal peril!"

"They're actually just friends at the moment," Hayate said.

"Also, I'm pretty sure Mummy was the one whose life was truly in danger," Hani said. Hound Dog growled and barked at them even more than before, and Hayate couldn't remember if anything had ever made her feel so terrified before.

"Now now, let's all settle down a bit," Nedzu said from atop Hound Dog's shoulder. "That being said, you two really should have called me the second you saw Syrup and Oboro."

"We know," Hayate said.

"This was a covert and personal operation of mine, and while I was able to hide some of the more sensitive details, I was still forced to tell two civilians about the origins of those animals, and I shouldn't have had to do that."

"We know," Hani said.

"The only reason they didn't ask too many questions is that they got distracted by Hawks giving Kaede-kun his Quirk."

"For the record, I still feel pretty tired. I heard about it, but I never thought it'd be so rough," Hawks said.

"Then, of course, there's what Hound Dog said about the reckless endangerment of the children. None of this makes you look particularly good, so what do you have to say for yourselves?" A question for the ages, and one that Hayate, to her own surprise, had an answer for.

"There's nothing that we can say for ourselves, sir. We screwed up and almost got people hurt because of it, that can't be argued with," Hayate said. As she readied herself for the next part of her speech, she touched a button on the side of her helmet, and in an instant, her costume retreated back into her wristwatch. "However, I do have something I can say in regards to the animals: we should leave them with Kaede and Risa!"

"What?!" Hound Dog asked.

"What? I mean, yes! This is a decision we both came to at the exact same time!" Hani said as she deactivated her own costume. The way Hani didn't hesitate to side with her was adorable, but now wasn't the time for that.

"Our mission was to make sure that all of the animals found nice homes with loving caretakers, right? Well just look at _that_." Hayate directed everyone's attention to the street below them where Oboro was juggling balls of fire while Risa applauded him and Kaede was using Hawks' Quirk to fly through the air with Syrup. "Those girls loved those two from the moment they laid eyes on them, and they them. No one could make them happier than those girls, so even trying to separate them would just be—it would just be cruel! Putting what Hani and I did aside, this is where they belong!"

"Okay!" Nedzu said.

"Wait, what?" Hayate didn't expect that to work, and judging by everyone's faces, she wasn't alone in that regard.

"You've made a very convincing case here, and I agree with all of it," Nedzu said as he hopped off of Hound Dog. "When I first escaped from the Animal Farm, all I wanted was a friend to remind me that the world wasn't so bleak and unforgiving, but such a person never came; I did manage to learn that through a series of events I won't bore you with, but it wouldn't have hurt to learn that a little sooner. I want all of my brothers and sisters to go to good homes so they have an easier time at learning to love the world than I did, and it would seem that Kaede-kun and Risa-kun have done that for Syrup and Oboro without even realizing it."

"Sir! That is… without a doubt a beautiful sentiment!" Hound Dog said before letting out a series of growls.

"So it's okay? The little girls can keep the little guys?" Hani asked.

"Of course," Nedzu said. "And since you two did do your job of finding a good home for them, I don't see any reason why you should get in trouble for this, do you?"

"N-No! Not at all, sir!" Hayate stammered out. With that, any fears she had of having to move back in with her parents vanished into thin air; it was a happy day for all.

"So we're just giving a couple of girls two superpowered animals? I don't have a problem with it or anything, I just wanted to make sure because I know some people who are just going to _love _this," Hawks said with a smile.

"Good to know," Nedzu said. "Well, if we're all done here, I think we can go home. Let's meet at the Latte Larry's near U.A. tomorrow to finish up the paperwork." Everyone nodded at that, and once that was through, Nedzu and Hound Dog climbed down the side of the building while Hawks flew away into the air; as they were all leaving, Hayate could have sworn she heard someone say something about adding today to the "Kaede File", whatever that was supposed to mean.

"Oh my God, I'm so happy we're not in trouble!" Hani said as she fell onto Hayate's shoulder.

"I know, I know, I feel the same," Hayate said as she leaned down and kissed Hani. As her wife went red in the face, the two of them turned to look down at Kaede and Risa, still playing with Syrup and Oboro without a care in the world. "I'm so glad they get to keep them."

"Me, too. Can't believe anyone could have thought it would be a problem. Overpowered Quirks aside, they're just normal, adorable animals."

"Yeah, what's the worst that could happen?"

A chill ran through Hayate's spine, but she elected to ignore it.

* * *

**Name: Hayate Honjo**

**Kaede's cousin on her father's side, Hayate Honjo is the Big Foot Hero, Rapid Rabbit—she's actually sensitive about how big her feet are. On her first solo mission, Hayate fought against the now-defunct Villain group called the Antinoids, but was defeated by one of their top enforcers, General Honey Trap, real name Hani Kanbu. However, as luck would have it, Hayate was Hani's type and decided to let her go to avoid causing permanent damage to her pretty face. The next day, Hani was violently kicked out of the Antinoids by their leader, X; she apparently didn't mean to actually fire her, but Hani didn't care for obvious reasons. She somehow ended up on Hayate's couch, and they then worked together to destroy the Antinoids, the two getting married immediately afterward.**

***Hayate and Hani's wristwatches are a special type of support item built by General Melt Out—Hani stole Hayate's as she left their original base. They're highly advanced pieces of machinery to the point that no one's been able to perfectly replicate them, and since all of the Generals have been missing since the defeat of the Antinoids, getting Melt Out to go into detail on them is impossible.**

***Hayate secretly wishes her costume exposed more skin, but she's too embarrassed to tell anyone.**

* * *

**Name: Hani Honjo, née Kanbu**

**Kaede's cousin through marriage, Hani Honjo is the Piercing Blow Hero, Honey Trap. Born Hani Kanbu, she grew up on the wrong side of the tracks—probably the left side—and eventually found herself as General Honey Trap of the Antinoids. One day, she was dominating a newbie Hero named Rapid Rabbit, and as she went for the kill, her mask came off, revealing that Rapid Rabbit was exactly her type of woman. Naturally, she let her go to avoid causing permanent damage to her pretty face, but that resulted in her being violently forced out of the Antinoids by their leader, X; she apparently didn't mean to actually fire her, but Hani didn't care for obvious reasons. She somehow ended up on Hayate's couch, and they then worked together to destroy the Antinoids, the two getting married immediately afterward. After that, through a long and tedious series of events that don't need to be detailed, Hani was able to earn a clean slate and become a legitimate Hero.**

***Hayate and Hani's wristwatches are a special type of support item built by General Melt Out—Hani stole Hayate's as she left their original base. They're highly advanced pieces of machinery to the point that no one's been able to perfectly replicate them, and since all of the Generals have been missing since the defeat of the Antinoids, getting Melt Out to go into detail on them is impossible.**

***In the brief moments where Hani manages to stop drooling over Hayate, she's actually a very competent Hero.**

* * *

**Name: Syrup/Subject 2020-TTL**

**Quirk: Gaia's Love**

***This Quirk is a combination of multiple Quirks via breeding and experimentation.**

***Abilities: Syrup has the power of flight, possesses enhanced strength, can manipulate plants, increase his size to multiple times his original size, and fire a laser from his mouth formed from funneling out his own energy.**

****Updates on all information pending.**

* * *

**Name: Oboro/Subject 2020-KTN**

**Quirk: Demon Fox**

***This Quirk is a combination of multiple Quirks via breeding and experimentation.**

***Abilities: Oboro has enhanced speed, can use pyrokinesis, and can create illusions capable of actually harming people by sending commands into their brains to make them register the pain as being legitimate.**

****Updates on all information pending.**

* * *

**Name: Kaede Honjo**

**Quirk: Devour**

***Creates an indestructible shield that attaches itself to her left hand. If Kaede is ever more than a meter than a half away from her shield, either the shield will be teleported to her hand or she'll be teleported to the shield.**

***Holding the shield causes Kaede's natural defense to increase and make certain attacks painless. The boost in defense increases as Kaede increases the number of Quirks she copied.**

***If the shield makes contact with a Quirk user, their energy will be drained and Kaede will obtain a copy of their Quirk, along with complete knowledge of how it works. Once she has copied ten Quirks, all new Quirks are sent into an "inventory" for later use.**

***When Kaede falls asleep for at least one hour, all of the Quirks in her shield are taken out and put into her inventory. Kaede is then free to install as many Quirks as she wants into her shield, and she can keep taking Quirks from her inventory over the course of the day until the first time she reaches ten Quirks.**

***Copied Quirks can only be activated by saying their name out loud. In addition, Kaede can combine her Quirks into new ones. Quirks used for this are immediately erased and have to be copied again to be usable.**

***Devour cannot copy the Quirks of animals.**

***Kaede's Active Quirks:**

****Slipknot(Climb Anything-Man)**

****Seiryu(Azulong)**

****Big Step(Rapid Rabbit/Big Sis Hayate)**

****Stinger(Honey Trap/Big Sis Hani)**

****Heel Stinger**

****Mummification(Mummy)**

****Fierce Wings(Hawks)**

****Dog(Hound Dog)**

***Quirks in Inventory:**

****Long Neck(Random kid)**

****Muscle Growth(Random kid)**

****Glamour(Random kid)**

****Earphone Jack(Random kid)**

****Longevity(Kyudai Garaki)**

****Bouncy Laser(Sugiko Honjo)**

****Stretchy Fingers(Friend of pomeranian boy)**

****Puffy Cheeks(Random kid)**

****Rock Fist(Random kid)**

****Hair Extension(Random kid)**

****Nitro Wings**

****High-Speed Portal Cutter**

****Shield(Crust)**

****Top Gear(Risa Shiramine)**

****Burning Letters(Shy)**

****Gas(Spirits)**

****Restaurering(Lady Black)**

****Sleeping Strike(Meng Long)**

****Tape(Random kid)**

****Triple Spark**

****Lizard Tail Splitter(Random kid)**

****Plastic Love**

****Centaur(Random customer)**

****Minotaur(Random customer)**

****Leap(Pop Step)**

****Slide and Glide(The Hauler)**

****Air Slide**

****Earth Flow(Pixie-Bob)**

****Gatling(Gunhead)**

****Earth Bullets**

****Lip Service(Random customer)**

****Book Maker(Random customer)**

****Angry Umbrella(Random customer)**

****Duto Dodge(Random customer)**

****Beautification**

****Alchemy(Isuzu Haganeno)**

****Transform(Himiko Toga)**

****Rabbit(Mirko)**

****Etcetera, etcetera**

***Discarded Quirks:**

****Explosion(Pomeranian boy)**

****Wings(Friend of pomeranian boy)**

****Knives Out(Matsuda Honjo)**

****Warp(Kurogiri)**

****Spark(Random kid)**

****Matchstick(Random kid)**

****Lighter(Random kid)**

****Elasticity(Gentle Criminal)**

****Love(La Brava)**

****Charm(Saito)**

****Etcetera, etcetera**

*****Updates on all information pending**

* * *

**Name: Risa Shiramine**

**Quirk: Top Gear**

***Gives Risa a boost in strength and speed upon activation.**

***The boost will continually increase after certain intervals of time, but will automatically reset if Risa takes physical damage. Continually increasing the intensity of Top Gear can cause physical harm to Risa.**

***Risa has a technique called "Empty Shell". Upon activation, Top Gear automatically jumps up several levels and gives her the power to create an afterimage of herself, but the trade-off is that using Empty Shell will automatically reset her Quirk not long after.**

****Updates on all information pending.**

* * *

**I'd like to give a quick shout-out to The Infamous Man, who's published a new story called _"...Or Is He Both?"_ Just like this story, it chronicles the adventures of a devil in human skin using a shield to create chaos; his devil isn't as scary as mine, but then again, that's a pretty hard feat to accomplish.**


	4. An Apparent Battle of Honor

Amongst all the students of Arusaka Junior High, none should have garnered more attention than Kasumi Kensei. Her grades had been at the top of her class from day one, she was always volunteering for projects designed to improve both the school and the wider community, her Quirk was one of the most powerful and most useful Quirks in the entire school, and while she typically tried to avoid dwelling on it to not become too vain, she was very attractive for her age and could probably pass for a high schooler if she really tried. All of those character traits and more painted a pretty picture of Kasumi, one that would have been the prettiest if not for a certain someone.

"Kensei-san, what are your horns made out of?" was what Kaede Honjo asked of her.

"My horns?" Kasumi asked, instinctually feeling up the large, trapezoidal horns protruding out from each side of her head.

"Yeah! I've always been super curious about that. They're white and they stick out of your head, so I wanna say that they're made of bones, but you never know with this stuff, so what is it?"

"I, um, don't know. I don't think I ever thought about it that much."

"Aw, man." Honjo pouted as she spun around in her chair while waving her ridiculously large shield around.

Kaede Honjo was the reason Kasumi didn't draw enough attention as she thought she should. Honjo and her friends were always doing something weird, and whether it was that barely legal business she ran after school or the giant turtle that occasionally flew her to the gate in the morning, it was always something that turned all eyes on her. She wasn't so petty that she hated someone other than her getting attention, but Honjo didn't seem to actually be putting in any effort in obtaining all of the amazing things she had, and that was why the girl drew her ire. Kasumi said that, but in the three years they had gone to school together, it wasn't until the current year that they were ever in the same class, and even then, they had hardly ever spoken to each other. When it came down to it, Honjo asking about her horns was the most they had ever said to each other, and sitting next to each other in the teachers' lounge was the closest they had ever physically been to one another.

"Sorry to keep you two waiting," their homeroom teacher said as he entered the teachers' lounge.

"It's—Whoa, stop!" Honjo said, slamming her shield into the ground to stop herself from spinning around. "It's fine. What's up?"

"Yes, what did you wish to speak with us about?" Kasumi asked.

"Something very important. When you and your classmates were filling out your career questionnaires, you both said that you wanted to go to U.A., correct?" their teacher asked.

"That's right! That's the best school to go to be a Hero, and since Risa and Isuzu-chan want to go there, I gotta go there, too!" Honjo said. U.A. was the most elite Hero school in the country, and she only wanted to go there to pal around with her friends. It was downright laughable.

"Well, whatever the reason, you and Kensei-san have the best shot of getting in out of anyone in this school. So good, in fact, that we've decided to write one of you a letter of recommendation."

"Really? Thank you!" Kasumi found herself sharing in Honjo's excitement. Only the best junior high students could earn a letter of recommendation into a Hero school, and earning one for U.A. meant that you were elite even amongst the elite. Something like that would more than prove her worth to the world, and she'd happily take it, even if she had to share it with Honjo.

"Wait, did you say 'one of us'?" Kasumi asked after her teacher's statement fully sunk in.

"Yes, that's right," their teacher said. "Because of how difficult the exam is, U.A. only allows schools to send one person in on recommendation per year. That way, if there are multiple applicants from the school, there's a higher chance of at least one person getting admitted."

"Oh, I guess that's pretty practical, when you—"

"If I may ask, what did Honjo-san do to make her deserving of a recommendation?" was how Kasumi interrupted Honjo.

"Huh? Yeah, what _did _I do?"

"Quite a lot, actually," their teacher said. "For starters, her Quirk is incredibly powerful, one of those 'once in a generation' kind of things if I had to guess. Her volunteer work for the community has also garnered a lot of attention, and she already has combat experience from dealing with no less than three Villain attacks over the past ten years. Honestly, it'd be crazier if Honjo-san didn't qualify for one."

"Oh, I don't know if I'm _that _good, or anything," Honjo said, sheepishly rubbing the back of her head.

"That's not to say your record isn't impressive either, Kensei-san. If academics were the sole deciding factor, you'd be chosen over Honjo-san in a heartbeat, but it's just not that simple, you see. Don't worry, though. Whichever one of you doesn't get the letter will surely be able to pass the regular exam with flying colors."

Kasumi sincerely wondered how much teachers were paid to be so patronizing. He went on about minute things Kasumi couldn't be bothered to pay attention to, though Honjo seemed to be nodding rather enthusiastically to all of it like a bobblehead. At some point, their teacher dismissed them, and while they were walking back to class, Honjo wouldn't stop going on about how excited she was to get into U.A. in such a posh and fancy way.

"How ridiculous."

"Huh? What do you mean?" Kasumi didn't mean to say those two words out loud, but she didn't regret it, not in the slightest.

"Honjo-san, I don't hate you, but let it be known that I personally cannot stand for what is happening right now," Kasumi said.

"Wait, what?" Honjo asked, dumbfounded.

"I refuse to lose an opportunity like this to an airheaded good like yourself."

"Wait, what?" Honjo asked, dumbfounded.

"On the honor of the Kensei Family, I, Kasumi Kensei, challenge you to a duel! Whoever loses must give up on the recommendation to U.A.!"

"Wait, what?!" Honjo asked, far more dumbfounded than she had ever been before.

* * *

"And you said _yes_?!" Kaede was having lunch with Risa and Isuzu in the science lab when she finally told them about what happened with Kasumi. Kaede had a feeling Risa was going to yell at her when she told her the story, but that didn't mean she had to like it.

"I panicked! I didn't know what to say!" Kaede said.

"No! In a situation like that, you say no!"

"I told you, I panicked!" Kaede started twiddling her thumbs. "Also, when she challenged me to a duel, I thought that she meant a card game, and by the time I figured out what she really meant, it was almost lunchtime, and I'd just feel kind of embarrassed to only bring it up now."

"I totally get that, but still, this is just—ugh!"

"I'm not familiar with that adjective. Could you use it in another sentence, please?" Isuzu asked while eating a sandwich Kaede made for her.

"Shut it." Risa turned back to Kaede. "You need to tell her that you don't want to do this, okay?"

"I, um, kind of don't want to, though," Kaede said. Risa gave her the exact look she expected her to give her.

"Are you insane?"

"I don't think so? It's just that she's really serious about this, so I don't think she'll be happy until it happens. If having a duel will make Kensei-san feel better, then I don't think it'd be right to deny her that. Plus, I've always wanted to do something with someone cool like Kensei-san, so even if it's a duel, this can still be fun, I think."

"How very much like you, Kaede-chan," Isuzu said, smiling as she ate the second sandwich Kaede made for her. She couldn't deny that. Kaede wasn't serious about most things she did, but she still had an undeniable respect for people who put their all into everything. Kasumi seemed like she was one of those people, so if she could help her with whatever it was she was doing, then she would do it.

Kaede also thought that having an actual duel could be more fun than a normal fight, but she thought it would be better to keep that to herself.

"When's the duel supposed to happen, again?" Risa asked.

"She said she wanted to do it tomorrow after school at her house," Kaede said.

"Tomorrow, eh? Maybe that'll give me time to get less annoyed by this."

"With any luck, but who knows?" Isuzu asked. Above all else, Kaede wanted to be someone who would know.

* * *

By the time school let out the next day, Risa did cool down to a certain extent, and the three of them, along with Syrup and Oboro, made their way to Kasumi's house. Kasumi, long since having exchanged her uniform for a pink kimono, was waiting for them all outside a peculiarly long fence, and she glared at them with an intensity Kaede only ever saw elsewhere in her mom whenever she forgot to do her homework before bedtime. Today was sure to be quite the day.

"I'm happy that you didn't back out, Honjo-san, though I'm surprised that you brought your friends whose names escape me at the moment," Kasumi said.

"Oh, right. This is Risa and Isuzu-chan. They're here to watch the duel," Kaede said.

"I don't _think_ you're going to try anything funny, but Kaede has a bad history with this kind of thing," Risa said.

"I just thought it'd be fun," Isuzu said.

"Right. I see you also brought those pets that sometimes come to school with you," Kasumi said.

"They wanted to watch, too. Is that okay?" Kaede asked.

"It's fine, I suppose."

"Wanna hold Syrup?" Syrup nodded his head as he floated next to Kaede. Kasumi stretched out a hand for a second before quickly retracting it and mumbling something under her breath. An odd sight, indeed. "I also brought a melon we can eat."

"Just put the melon aside for a moment and prepare yourself!" Kasumi said.

"Okay. Should I just put it in the kitchen, then?" Kaede asked as she headed for the door to Kasumi's house.

"You can just put it on the floor, but why are you going to the pool house?" Kaede stopped dead in her tracks.

"The pool house?" Risa asked.

"That's correct. I suppose we could do it there, but there's much more room in the dojo on the other side of the property."

"The property?" Isuzu asked.

"Don't worry, we don't have to walk; I already called ahead for one of the butlers to bring over a golf cart."

"Butlers? Golf cart? What?" As the words left her mouth, Kaede took full stock of her surroundings for the first time since they had arrived. Upon doing so, she noticed that the building that would certainly be large enough to be a house for the average person was merely situated in a small part of a far larger area of green littered with other buildings of similar shape and size and amenities like pools, koi ponds, and sports areas that included a cricket field and a bowling alley, all of which were built around a massive mansion that, if Kaede had to guess, could fit the entirety of her house in its entrance hall.

To summarize, it was quite possible that Kasumi Kensei was the richest person Kaede would ever accidentally pick a fight with.

"Can you adopt me, please?" Isuzu's question went unanswered.

* * *

The golf cart was delivered by a mustachioed butler of some sort, and Kasumi drove Kaede and the rest of the group across the property while Kaede helped herself to one of the fizzy beverages that were inside the cart; she didn't bring a lot of cash with her, so she hoped the drinks were free. Kasumi quickly brought them to what was apparently her dojo; Kaede had never been to a dojo because she didn't want to run the risk of taking a karate chop to the face or some equivalent of that, but she imagined that the average one would look like what Kasumi's looked like.

"Is right here good for the melon?" Kaede asked, pointing to a corner of the open wooden room they were in.

"It's fine. Just leave it there so we can get started," Kasumi said. Kaede did just that and moved to the center of the room to properly face Kasumi.

"You can do it, Kaede-chan!" Isuzu said.

"Kick her butt, Kaede!" Risa said. Syrup and Oboro each let out a cry and a yip that Kaede assumed to be encouraging.

"So Kensei-san, are we absolutely sure that we need to do this?" Kaede asked.

"Yes, this is the only way." Kasumi positioned her hands as if she were holding a sword, and a moment later, a katana with a reverse blade appeared within them out of nowhere. "I cannot allow my honor to be sullied by someone as lackadaisical as yourself, and I will do everything in my power to protect it!"

"And 'lackadaisical' means?"

"Now we fight!" Kaede was pretty sure it didn't mean that, but Kasumi was already charging at her. Kaede let out a yelp as she put up Devour to guard, but Kasumi jumped over her and, upon landing on the ground, immediately slashed at her back.

Kasumi's sword broke in two upon impact.

"What?!" Kasumi shouted as her sword dissolved into a cloud of purple smoke.

"Oh. Good," Kaede said.

"Okay, if it's like that, then I guess this is fine," Risa said.

"So, are we still doing this, or—" As Kaede turned around, Kasumi summoned a new reverse blade into each of her hands and came at Kaede's waist and chest, but just like before, the swords shattered upon impact and dissolved into a cloud of purple smoke. "I feel like I should tell you that this exact thing happened a few years ago, but with knives. Do you have something that can make your swords stronger?"

"Yes, I do. Come, Futsu-no-mitama!" Another sword appeared in Kasumi's hands, this one a wakizashi that looked like it was made out of stone, and it appeared to be bathed in a purple aura. "You asked for this, Honjo-san, so don't even think about crying once you lose!" Kasumi moved with incredible speed and slashed Kaede with enough force to knock her to the ground.

"Kaede, are you all right?!" Risa asked.

"Um, yeah! Didn't expect to get knocked down, but it still didn't hurt me!" Kaede said. She picked herself up just in time to see Kasumi's latest weapon shatter from impacting against her body.

"Impossible. Even one of my most treasured blades," Kasumi said as it dissolved into a cloud of purple smoke.

"Did that make it stronger, or—"

"Come, Juuchi Yosamu!" Another sword bathed in a purple aura appeared in Kasumi's hands. It was doubtful that it would do a better job of hurting her than any of the other ones, but Kaede didn't feel like getting knocked down again, so when Kasumi came at her, she threw up her shield and blocked the attack, the sword shattering and dissolving just like the others. "Come, Yawarakai-Te!" Another sword bathed in a purple aura appeared in Kasumi's hands. Kasumi came at Kaede again, but she threw up her shield and blocked the attack, causing the sword to shatter and dissolve just like the others.

"These are some pretty obscure references she's drawing from," Isuzu said.

"I know, right?" Risa asked.

"Enough of this nonsense!" Kasumi said. She put her hands against her chest, held them there for a few seconds before pulling them away, and then a new reverse blade appeared in her right hand, this one made of a purple steel and covered in a purple aura far more intense than what Kaede had seen on the other swords. "This is my most treasured blade, the Bewitching Blade, Yukari. If anything within my arsenal is capable of defeating you, it is the sword I hold within these hands!"

"Really? Oh, no," Kaede said a moment before Kasumi came at her once more. Kaede blocked her strike with Devour, but not only did the sword not break, but it also vanished for a second before reappearing in her left hand. "Oh, no." Kasumi slashed across her chest with her sword; the attack didn't hurt Kaede, but it still managed to push her back. The sword vanished and reappeared in Kasumi's right hand as she attacked her waist, once again only succeeding in pushing her back. Kasumi kept the pattern going until Kaede had been hit ten times and was pushed back against the wall. After that, Kasumi jumped back and tossed Yukari into the air. It stayed up in the air as nine identical copies appeared next to it, all of them having their tips pointed at Kaede. "Oh, no, oh, no."

"Purple Phantom Blade!" Kasumi swung her hands down as if there was still a sword in them and the ten floating swords flew at Kaede like missiles.

"Stronghold!" Kaede knew that it was still unlikely that any of the swords would be able to hurt her, but the sight of so many sharp objects coming at her still sent her into a panic, so she activated one of the Quirks in her shield and formed a translucent barrier around herself that both completely nullified the attack and caused all of the swords to shatter on impact. Risa, Isuzu, Syrup, and Oboro all cheered for her, but Kaede was just happy that she didn't have to risk getting hurt, no matter how unlikely it would have been.

"I can't believe it. Even my Yukari has been destroyed. I devoted so much time to crafting it, and yet—and yet—"

"Kensei-san, are you okay?" Kaede already knew the answer, but she couldn't stop herself from asking. "Are we still dueling? I mean, you said that was your best one, so—"

"Yes, we're still dueling! I haven't conceded! I refuse to give up! I will never—Oh, no." In the middle of her ranting, purple smoke started leaking out of Kasumi's body before an entire cloud exploded out of her.

"Oh, no! I made Kensei-san so mad that she exploded in a fit of rage!"

"That's not what this is! I mean, at least I hope not," Risa said. Syrup shot a laser into the cloud and dispersed it in an instant.

"Wait, what?" Kaede expected to see Kasumi coming at her with another attack the second the smoke was gone, but instead, the girl was now motionless and wore a look of defeat.

If Kaede had to guess, she would guess that it had something to do with her somehow spontaneously shrinking down to the size of a small child.

"Well if that isn't just adorable, I don't know what is," Isuzu said.

"This isn't cute!" Kasumi said while doing her best to hold up her now incredibly loose outfit; at the very least, she somehow managed to secure her bra over everything else.

"So, yeah. What is this?" Risa asked.

"Hold on, I got it." Kaede slowly walked over to Kasumi and touched her with Devour. Kasumi fell flat on her stomach as a new jewel appeared on her shield and she gained a copy of Kasumi's Quirk. "Okay, I got it! Kensei-san's Quirk is called Infinite Creation of Swords. It lets her make swords out of thin air, and the ones she likes the most get a purple aura and are a lot stronger than the normal swords. It takes a while for her to remake a sword after it breaks, even more so for the purple ones, and if she either uses her Quirk too much or breaks too many swords, then she won't be able to use her Quirk for a while, and then her body shrinks down to the size of a small child."

"That is just a super random side effect," Risa said. Oboro yipped in agreement. "So, are we done here?" Kasumi let out a long groan.

"Kensei-san, it's okay," Kaede said.

"No, no it's not!" Kasumi said. "I made such a big show about wanting to beat you, and I couldn't even leave so much as a scratch! I even put my family's name on the line; this must be punishment for having the audacity to do that so carelessly."

"What do you mean?" Kasumi said nothing. "You know, a lot of my customers say that I'm a really good listener. Just throwing that out there." Kasumi crawled up into a sitting position, hugging her knees while her back faced Kaede.

"I'm sure you and friends already figured out, but I'm incredibly well off," Kasumi said. "The Kensei Family has been composed of societal elites for generations; we've been feudal lords, army generals, lawyers, politicians, mobile phone game developers, what have you. With how much society has grown to revolve around Heroes, we've naturally shifted focus there, so anyone who shows interest in that field is expected to be the best at what they're doing. I want to be a Hero, so everyone in my family expects me to be perfect at everything that needs to be done to achieve that. Losing to someone is already bad on its own, but losing to someone who doesn't even look like they try? I would never hear the end of it, and now I've made it worse by challenging you to a fight I never even had a chance of winning. What a joke, right?" Kaede certainly didn't think it was a joke, and it looked like Risa and Isuzu didn't see it that way, either. As such, partially as if on instinct and partially because she was the perfect size for it, Kaede stepped over to Kasumi, bent down, and patted her head to try and make her feel better.

"You know, if you want the recommendation, you can have it," Kaede said.

"What?" Risa seemed to share her sentiment.

"I don't think you're wrong about me not really taking this stuff too seriously—I mean, I _do _try hard, but not nearly as hard as you. We've never hung out before yesterday, but I've always seen you be super good at everything for three years, so if anyone deserves to get in like that, it's you."

"You're just trying to make me feel better."

"Yes, but it's still true! You're smart, you're good at sports, everyone likes hanging out with you, your Quirk is cool, even if it's not the kind of thing I would use, though I think I have ideas for what I could combine it with." Isuzu gave a thumbs up to that. "What else? Oh, your horns are cool—did you ever find out what they're made of?"

"I think it's a carbon-like substance—"

"And your hair's long and smooth and shiny, and your face has a great complexion, and, um, oh yeah, your breasts!"

"My breasts?" Kasumi scooted a few centimeters away from Kaede.

"Yeah! They're super big, maybe even bigger than Isuzu-chan's! Personally, I like legs better, but I have nothing against breasts, and a lot of people feel the same way! And you also—"

"Okay, that's enough of that!" A red-faced Risa interjected by jumping in-between Kaede and Kasumi while Isuzu seemed to be nodding her head a lot while looking at Kasumi.

"Sorry, I got off track. The point is that you've got lots of stuff to be proud of, so you shouldn't let yourself think you're a loser just because you're not perfect. Besides, you don't need to be perfect! Isuzu-chan, what did you tell me that one philosopher said about being perfect that one time?"

"'Il meglio è l'inimico del bene'," Isuzu said.

"Yeah, what she said, but not in Italian. You're great, Kensei-san, and you shouldn't ever forget it!" Kasumi didn't say anything. She remained silent for several seconds before standing up and turning to face Kaede moments before putting herself in a dogeza posture. "H-Hey, you don't need to—"

"Honjo-san, I would like to thank you for such kind—mostly kind—words. I would also like to cancel our arrangement," Kasumi said.

"Really? Why?"

"If I cannot earn a letter of recommendation through my own ability, then I don't want to take it from another person, especially if that someone is you. I see now that you are a person of true character; you are a brave and virtuous person, yet I still decided to treat you poorly. Please forgive me!"

"Okay!" Kasumi picked her head up.

"It's that easy?"

"Sometimes. It helps that I was never mad at you in the first place. Neither were Risa or Isuzu-chan."

"Mostly annoyed, I guess. But hey, you're one of the only people to pick a fight with Kaede without wanting to kill her, so that's fine enough in my book," Risa said.

"I'm good with whatever, pretty much," Isuzu said.

"So if we're good about everything, let's be friends, Kasumi-san!" Kasumi stood back up to fully face Kaede, although she still had to look up at her.

"I would like that. I would like that a lot, Hon—Kaede-san." As Kasumi smiled at Kaede, Syrup flew down onto her head and Oboro jumped up on her shoulder. Kasumi's lip quivered for a second before she started petting both of the animals while mumbling various things under her breath.

It all made for an adorable sight that served as the perfect capstone for the day.

* * *

Amongst all the students of Arusaka Junior High, none should have garnered more attention than Kasumi Kensei. Her grades had been at the top of her class from day one, she was always volunteering for projects designed to improve both the school and the wider community, her Quirk was one of the most powerful and most useful Quirks in the entire school, and while she typically tried to avoid dwelling on it to not become too vain, she was very attractive for her age and could probably pass for a high schooler if she really tried. All of those character traits and more painted a pretty picture of Kasumi, one that would have been the prettiest if not for a certain someone.

And she was fine with that. Kaede Honjo was someone who deserved respect and managed to earn it through her own unique way. If someone like Kaede managed to stand above her, then she could live with that, for she would be someone who would have more than earned it. That being said, she had no intention of simply rolling over for her. Kasumi still strived for excellence, so if there was a chance for her to come out on top between the two of them, she would do what she could to get it.

"We've decided to write Honjo-san the letter of recommendation to U.A." Kasumi failed to get it.

"Yay!" Kaede cheered, spinning around in her chair with glee. "This is—Whoa, stop!" Kaede slammed her shield into the ground to stop herself from spinning. "This is awesome! Thank you, sir! Oh, sorry, Kasumi-san."

"It's all right, Kaede-san." Kasumi wasn't lying when she said that.

"As I told you last week, Kensei-san, this doesn't mean that your record isn't anything remarkable," their teacher said. "Both you and Honjo-san had many good points that would justify a letter of recommendation, but what tipped things in Honjo-san's favor was the large number of people vouching for her."

"Wait, really? Who?" Kaede asked.

"A surprisingly large number of people. There's a lot of the people you met with in your volunteer work—though I couldn't, in good conscience, count the words of the two criminals into this. A student at Shiketsu High who wishes to remain anonymous seemed to speak highly of you, as did U.A.'s own principal for reasons he said were private, and there were even a number of Heroes who decided to weigh in on the matter such as Crust, Hawks, Rapid Rabbit, Honey Trap, and U.A.'s own Eraserhead, Present Mic, Hound Dog, and another anonymous individual. Yes, it would seem that there are many people who believe you have what it takes to be a great Hero." Kasumi considered herself to be one of those people.

"I don't get a lot of that, but it still makes me happy to hear about it all," Kaede said while sheepishly rubbing the back of her head.

"You deserve to be happy; this is a tremendous achievement, and you've most certainly earned it! Ah, sorry if I'm being insensitive to you, Kensei-san, it's just that—"

"It's fine. I can manage." Kasumi wasn't lying when she said that, and she felt great about that fact.

"Well, here's hoping you both pass." Kasumi didn't need his words of encouragement; she knew she was going to get into U.A., even if it wasn't the way she wanted to get in, and that was perfectly fine. She knew where and how she stood, and she didn't need anyone other than herself to tell her that she was good enough.

Hearing it from Kaede was certainly nice, though.

* * *

**Name: Kasumi Kensei**

**Quirk: Infinite Creation of Swords**

***Allows Kasumi ****to ****create swords out of thin air.**

*******The shape and nature of the swords can be manipulated, and swords she grows particularly attached to—like the Yukari and swords based off of historical Japanese swords—gain a purple aura to them and increased power when used.**

***When a swo******r**d is ******broken, it will ************take ****************time **********fo******r** he****r ****to ******be a**********ble ********to recreate i****t, especially if it was clad in a ******purple aura. I********f Kasumi either uses her Quirk too much or breaks too many swords, not only will she not be able to use her Quirk for a while, ************bu****t her body will shrink down to the size of a small child (approx. 120cm).** **

***Yuka******ri was originally a swo************r****d Kasumi ********crafted as a child, as per ****************the ********************traditions o********************f ************************************the Kensei ************************************************Family. ************ **** ********

******Updates on all information pending.****

* * *

**Name: Kaede Honjo**

**Quirk: Devour**

***Creates an indestructible shield that attaches itself to her left hand. If Kaede is ever more than a meter than a half away from her shield, either the shield will be teleported to her hand or she'll be teleported to the shield.**

***Holding the shield causes Kaede's natural defense to increase and make certain attacks painless. The boost in defense increases as Kaede increases the number of Quirks she copied.**

***If the shield makes contact with a Quirk user, their energy will be drained and Kaede will obtain a copy of their Quirk, along with complete knowledge of how it works. Once she has copied ten Quirks, all new Quirks are sent into an "inventory" for later use.**

***When Kaede falls asleep for at least one hour, all of the Quirks in her shield are taken out and put into her inventory. Kaede is then free to install as many Quirks as she wants into her shield, and she can keep taking Quirks from her inventory over the course of the day until the first time she reaches ten Quirks.**

***Copied Quirks can only be activated by saying their name out loud. In addition, Kaede can combine her Quirks into new ones. Quirks used for this are immediately erased and have to be copied again to be usable.**

***Devour cannot copy the Quirks of animals.**

***Kaede's Active Quirks:**

****Stronghold(Barrierfreeman)**

**********Infinite Creation of Swords(Kasumi)****

***Quirks in Inventory:**

****Long Neck(Random kid)**

****Muscle Growth(Random kid)**

****Glamour(Random kid)**

****Earphone Jack(Random kid)**

**********Life Force**(Kyudai Garaki)**

****Bouncy Laser(Sugiko Honjo)**

****Stretchy Fingers(Friend of pomeranian boy)**

****Puffy Cheeks(Random kid)**

****Rock Fist(Random kid)**

****Hair Extension(Random kid)**

****Nitro Wings**

****High-Speed Portal Cutter**

****Shield(Crust)**

****Top Gear(Risa Shiramine)**

****Burning Letters(Shy)**

****Gas(Spirits)**

****Restaurering(Lady Black)**

****Sleeping Strike(Meng Long)**

****Tape(Random kid)**

****Triple Spark**

****Lizard Tail Splitter(Random kid)**

****Plastic Love**

****Centaur(Random customer)**

****Minotaur(Random customer)**

****Minnocence**

****Leap(Pop Step)**

****Slide and Glide(The Hauler)**

****Air Slide**

****Earth Flow(Pixie-Bob)**

****Gatling(Gunhead)**

****Earth Bullets**

****Lip Service(Random customer)**

****Book Maker(Random customer)**

****Angry Umbrella(Random customer)**

****Duto Dodge(Random customer)**

****Beautification**

****Alchemy(Isuzu Haganeno)**

****Transform(Himiko Toga)**

****Rabbit(Mirko)**

****Slipknot(Climb Anything-Man)**

****Seiryu(Azulong)**

****Big Step(Rapid Rabbit/Big Sis Hayate)**

****Stinger(Honey Trap/Big Sis Hani)**

****Heel Stinger**

****Mummification(Mummy)**

****Fierce Wings(Hawks)**

****Dog(Hound Dog)**

****Etcetera, etcetera**

***Discarded Quirks:**

****Explosion(Pomeranian boy)**

****Wings(Friend of pomeranian boy)**

****Knives Out(Matsuda Honjo)**

****Warp ******Gate**(Kurogiri)**

****Spark(Random kid)**

****Matchstick(Random kid)**

****Lighter(Random kid)**

****Elasticity(Gentle Criminal)**

****Love(La Brava)**

****Charm(Saito)**

****Etcetera, etcetera**

*****Updates on all information pending**


	5. When You Don't Study, but Still Get an A

The cool February air tried to nip at her neck, but Kaede was plenty prepared for that; she was wearing the Canadian flag sweater Risa bought her for Christmas, the absolute best defense for the cold. She couldn't risk the winter air affecting her in a negative way, not when it was finally time for her and her friends to take the U.A. entrance exam.

"Hey, what do you think that guy's Quirk is?" Kaede asked as she and her friends watched a myriad of people pass them by on their way into the building.

"It looks like whatever he just coughed up is sticking itself to a tree, so it probably allows him to make some sort of adhesive," Kasumi said.

"Oh, cool! I could totally work with that! What about that girl over there?"

"The one with the blank expression? She's eating a giant gummy worm, so my guess is it's some form of size alteration," Isuzu said.

"Neat. I bet I could do a lot with that, too. Oh, what about that guy over there?"

"You mean the green-haired guy getting worked up over that girl barely saying two words to him? I'd have to go with the inability to talk to women," Risa said.

"I don't want a Quirk like that. I don't know what I'd do if I could never talk to you again, Risa."

"Yeah. Same." Risa tucked a bit of her face behind the scarf Kaede knit her for Christmas; it must have been colder than she thought. "Come on, let's go get registered already."

"I bet you'd like to do that, wouldn't you?" Isuzu asked. She and Kasumi both laughed a little at something and they all headed inside. The outside of the building was already filled to the brim with applicants, so it only made sense that the inside was filled with even more people. It was tempting to tap everyone around her with Devour and copy their Quirks, but she held back her desire to do so and did what she could to keep her shield away from people. After all, she'd have all the time in the world to gain new Quirks and increase her defenses once she was actually accepted.

_Temptation aside, it's super hard not to do it when there are so many people around_, Kaede thought. _I gotta hold my shield up over my head to keep from touching people, and I don't have any confidence in my biceps, whatsoever! I'm just glad Risa and Kasumi-san are here to push people away; I'd probably fall over the second I tried to do it myself._

As Kaede thought that, she caught sight of two small girls being pushed to the ground in a failed attempt at moving through the crowd. Someone was about to step on one of their heads, so Kaede, thinking fast, loaded a Quirk into her previously empty shield and called out, "Plastic Love!" A wave of energy was released, and the two girls, along with Kaede and her group, gained highly elastic bodies; in the case of the two girls, the guy who was about to step on one of them bounced off of her and fell down, himself. He picked himself up in front of a jeering crowd, cursed them out and called them extras for some reason, and then stomped off somewhere else.

"I was hoping to keep my shield empty until the test started, but this is fine," Kaede said, stretching her arms over to help the two girls up. "Are you two all right?"

"We're fine," one of the girls said. "It's weird to be so stretchy—"

"But it's better than getting stepped on, so thank you!" the other girl said.

"I'm gonna take a shot in the dark and guess that you're twins," Risa said.

"That's right!" the first girl said. "I'm the older sister, Mai Kinniku—"

"And I'm the younger sister, Yui Kinniku. Um, we don't always talk like this, I swear," the second girl said. As Kaede's friends introduced themselves one by one, she was able to get a closer look at them, allowing her to see that the two girls were mirrors of each other in regards to their faces and physiques, physiques that were somehow even smaller than her own, and it all made them look rather cute. The only things that differentiated them were their hair and eye colors: Mai had green eyes and long, black hair with green highlights, while Yui had pink eyes and long, white hair with pink highlights. It was a contrast that Kaede found to be just adorable.

"So how'd you two end up on the floor, anyway?" Risa asked.

"We were trying to get registered for the entrance exam, but Yui and I got mixed up after we went to the bathroom and couldn't remember where to go," Mai said.

"We tried asking someone for help, but no one's paying attention to anyone around them, and since we're so small, we ended up getting knocked over," Yui said.

"Would you like to come with us, then? You would probably run into the same issue again by yourselves, and it would be convenient for all of us since most of us are heading to the same place," Kasumi said.

"That'd be nice, but how are we going to find anything?"

"Just leave it to us. Kaede-chan, if you would be so kind," Isuzu said.

"Right!" Kaede used her elastic body to extend her neck high above the crowd for a few seconds before bringing it back down; her head bounced around for a few seconds before settling back into place. "Okay, I know where all our stuff is now. Registration for the normal exam is a little down on the left, but Risa and I have to get our support items checked, so can we do that first?"

"Yes, of course! Thank you!" Mai said.

"Yes, thank you, Kaede-san!" Yui said. Kaede could tell that these two would be a lot of fun.

From there, Kaede and her friends made their way through the crowd while forming a protective ring around Mai and Yui to protect them from getting trampled. Soon enough, they made their way to the support item registration desk, a brown-haired teenage boy with a sturdy-looking body standing behind it.

"Risa and I want to register support items for the exam," Kaede said.

"No problem," the boy said. "I take it you're registering your shield, but what about your friend?"

"Oh no, my shield is part of my Quirk. Risa and I want to register our pets." The boy had been smiling up until that point, but he lost it in favor of a confused expression.

"Your pets?"

"Yep!" Kaede pointed to Syrup, who had been floating above her head the entire time, and Risa pointed to Oboro, who had been sitting on her shoulder the entire time.

"You mean those aren't some weird toys? They look like they're made of rubber."

"That's a whole different thing that'll wear off soon," Risa said.

"Right. I'm guessing by the flying turtle that these two animals have Quirks?"

"They sure do!" Kaede said. Mai and Yui's eyes both seemed to light up in response to that. "So do we need to fill out a form, or—"

"You know you can't bring them with you, right?" the boy cut in.

Kaede's head shot up in surprise and accidentally knocked Syrup higher into the air.

"I had a feeling this would happen. I tried to warn you two," Kasumi said.

"Why can't Syrup and Oboro come with us?" Kaede asked as she fixed her head back into place.

"Because they're animals," the boy said.

"So?" Risa asked.

"So you can't use an animal as a support item. That's not how it works." Oboro let out a growl that Kaede couldn't help but agree with.

"You know, I'm actually applying for the support department, and in all the research I've done, I've never seen anything that prohibited the use of animals," Isuzu said.

"Really? Well, it's more like one of those unwritten rules, don't you think?" the boy asked. "When you think of support items, you think of stuff like jetpacks and laser cannons, not cute little animals."

"I appreciate you calling Syrup cute, but that's still unfair!" Kaede said. "What if I was a blind person who needed a seeing-eye dog to get around? Would I not be allowed to take Mr. Fluffbutt with me just because he's an animal? Or what if it was an emotional support animal? That even has support in the name, but I still wouldn't be able to bring Mr. Fluffbutt with me?"

"Why does this make-believe dog have a name?" Risa asked. Kaede shrugged her shoulders and kept staring at the boy in front of them. He looked like he was going to say something, but then he closed his mouth, scratched his head for a second, and pressed a button on a pager-like device attached to his waist.

"Yo Yo Yo, what's goin' on up in here?!" A moment later, Present Mic walked over to the desk with his trademark funky flow. He was already smiling, but for some reason, it seemed to brighten even further when Kaede caught his eye.

"These two are trying to have animals registered as support items. Is that allowed?" the boy asked.

"That is a good question. Let's find out." Present Mic reached into his jacket and pulled out what looked to be some sort of handbook. He flipped through it while muttering something under his breath, then he stopped at a page and ran his finger across. The cycle was repeated a few times before he closed the book and put it away.

"Well, would you look at that? Ain't no rule says a turtle and a fox can't be support items. Probably an oversight on our part, but if there's not a rule against it, no reason why it shouldn't be allowed," Present Mic said.

""Yay!"" Mai and Yui cheered in unison.

"Okay, thank you, sir," the boy said before handing Kaede and Risa each their own form. "Sorry about that. Just fill out these forms and you're good to go."

"It's okay. You were just doing your job, is all," Kaede said.

"That's right. You better believe that Chumon here's just a good kid doing his job," Present Mic said. "Then again, even if it wasn't allowed, I probably would've let it happen, considering that it's you two."

"Wait, why?" Risa asked.

"I said too much, so you better forget that part!" Kaede didn't have a problem with that, but she wondered if Risa felt the same way. "When you're all done with that, anyone who's taking the normal exam can just follow me to the testing room. Yeah!" Present Mic said.

"Isn't Isuzu-san the only one doing something else?" Mai asked.

"Not quite," Kasumi said. "Risa-san and I are taking the normal exam, but Kaede-san managed to qualify for a letter of recommendation."

"Wait, really? You're that good, Kaede-san?" Yui asked. Kaede gave a thumbs up and the two girls let out a unified, "Wow!" with sparkles in their eyes.

Being around those two really was going to be fun.

* * *

Soon enough, the group of six—eight if one counted Syrup and Oboro, which Kaede did—separated to go to their respective testing sites. The room Kaede ended up in was big, but not as big as she heard rooms could get to be at U.A., and while the hundred or so people in the room barely measured up to the thousands who were taking the normal exams, it was still enough to make her feel a little cramped and nervous. Luckily, Syrup floating down onto her head was enough to calm her nerves and let her breathe.

"You're a good turtle, Syrup, I hope you know that," Kaede said. The cry Syrup let out told her that he did know that.

"So, you really decided to bring an animal with you to the exam. Even if it does have a Quirk, it's quite a bold move to make."

"Thanks, I think? Also, who are you?" The person who addressed Kaede was a girl whose red hair was only long in the middle, the rest of it being short save for the two long strands sitting behind her pointed ears. Also, for some reason, she was wearing a red cape with a feathered collar.

"I saw the way you aided those diminutive girls in the entrance hall. Truly an act of true heroism, and one that makes you truly deserving of being tested against my might," the girl said.

"Neat. Who are you?"

"I thought that I would have to wait until the beginning of the school year to properly face off against you, so imagine my surprise to find that you are also one of the chosen elite. I clearly underestimated you, so in a way, you already have the advantage over me. Rest assured, this will not last!"

"Okay, but who are you?"

"I will waste no time in rising to the top of this school like a roaring fire, and from there, I shall burst into the professional world with the force of a great blazar, but the spark that starts my ignition will be conquering this test, and you shall be my kindling!"

"I don't know what a blazar is. Also, who are you?" The weird girl suddenly stuck a finger in her face.

"Tell me your name so I know who I am defeating."

"Kaede Honjo. Speaking of names—"

"Kaede Honjo. The name suits us well. It is a name worthy of respect, and at the same time, it is a name worthy of one who will soon be crushed under my heel!" Kaede moved the weird girl's finger away from her face and looked down at the ground.

"Wait, you're really wearing heels? That feels impractical. Also, who are you?" The weird girl threw a finger in her face once more.

"Know this, Kaede Honjo: today will go down in your history as a glorious day! You shall forever remember it as the day you sacrificed everything to empower the one and only Kyouma Hououin!" The weird girl, finally identified as Kyouma Hououin, started laughing like some sort of madwoman. At that point, Kaede wished she could feel nervous again instead of whatever it was she was currently feeling.

"Stop bothering people, Hououin." Hououin's cackling was stopped by a boy with red and white hair, the red and white being perfectly split in half across his head, with heterochromatic eyes and a large scar over the left side of his face. The way he so easily silenced her was rather impressive.

"Very well, Todoroki, I will silence myself. For now, anyway. This is hardly over, though. Prepare yourself for the most thorough destruction of your young life, Kaede Honjo!"

_Wasn't she supposed to stop talking? _Kaede asked herself. Regardless, Hououin and Todoroki walked off and left her alone, leaving her alone with a variety of emotions she wasn't sure how to process. _Focus, Kaede, focus! There are more important things going on than what some weird girl is doing. Like the test that's about to start! You gotta ace it if you want to pass, and you know what? You_ will _ace it!_

Soon enough, the written exam went underway. When Kaede was finished, she had the urge to roll up in a corner and die, and the worst part about that was that she knew that would happen even without Hououin.

* * *

The written exam was, fairly speaking, brutal. Risa knew that a top-performing school like U.A. wouldn't make its tests easy, but it was still a grueling and nerve-wracking experience for her to work through. Risa only had a small amount of confidence in her score, and if it wasn't for Isuzu and Kasumi's frequent study sessions, she probably wouldn't have even finished it.

"If it was that hard for me, imagine how hard Kaede's test was for her," Risa said. With the written exam long since finished, everyone had been moved to a lecture hall so Present Mic could explain the practical exam. There was a bit of a lull when some uptight boy wearing glasses started loudly asking questions and berating the green-haired boy she saw earlier for talking to himself, but Risa didn't pay it much mind.

"I'm sure she'll do fine. Probably not on the written exam, but more on the exam as a whole. Things have a way of working out for her, after all," Kasumi said.

"That's right! If it's Kaede-san—" Mai started.

"Then she can definitely do it! Oops, we did it again," Yui said. Oboro tagged along by patting Risa's cheek with his paw.

"Yeah, I guess it won't do any good if I'm the only one stressing over her," Risa said. She knew that Kaede believed in her, something that always made her happy, so the least she could do was believe in Kaede. If it was someone like Kaede, then it would be easy for a variety of reasons; some she wanted to keep buried down, some she was more than happy to indulge in.

"Hey, if you're gonna berate people for talking, then this girl's been talking up a storm, too." Risa turned her head and locked eyes with a girl sporting a blonde side ponytail and similarly colored pairs of cat ears and cat tails sticking out of her head and backside, respectively. For some reason, she was pointing right at her.

"Wait, what are you—"

"You too, miss!" All of a sudden, the bespectacled boy was yelling at her instead of the green-haired boy. "We are in the middle of an important discussion concerning this exam, yet you think it is more important to chatter on about random nonsense! If you cannot understand the value of what we are doing here, you should go home and stop bothering those of us who do!"

"Hey, just where the hell do you get off saying I'm not serious?! Besides, we'd already be done if you didn't interrupt Present Mic in the first place!"

"I had a valid question—"

"That anyone with a quarter of a brain would have been able to figure out! He didn't bring up the fourth robot because it's worth zero points; it _literally_ says that on the handout!"

"It does?" Mai asked.

"Hey, it does!" Yui said. A number of people began saying similar things to that effect while the bespectacled boy started to look more and more embarrassed.

"E-Even so, it is perfectly justifiable to question a discrepancy between what a handout says and what an instructor says, and that doesn't excuse you from making a scene!"

"You're the one that started all of this!"

"Okay, that's enough!" Present Mic amplified his voice with his Quirk and nearly knocked Risa out of her seat; Mai and Yui weren't as lucky, but Kasumi was quick to help them up. "I don't know about you guys, but I like to save my debates for the radio, so how about you both pipe down and let me finish, okay?"

"Yes, sir! I apologize for the interruption!" Risa gave her own apology as the bespectacled boy sat down, but her heart wasn't in it. She wasn't doing anything, wasn't bothering anyone, yet she still ended up making a scene in front of hundreds of people. It would have been easy to get mad at the bespectacled boy, but it wasn't his fault. The only reason he dragged her into it all was because of that catgirl drawing attention to her for no reason. Risa turned to get another look at the catgirl, and she saw her wearing a proud smirk while her two tails swished about in the air.

The girl was definitely going to get it.

* * *

"So you failed to conquer the first exam, did you? Well, I failed to give you a proper evaluation at the beginning of the day, so now our score is even! However, don't think you will be able to regain your advantage so easily, or even at all, because Kyouma Hououin does not lose to someone twice in one day!"

"Okay, then." Kaede had no idea what else she was supposed to say. She was feeling upset enough over how she knew she did on the written exam, and Hououin going on about whatever it was she was going on about didn't do anything to alleviate that. Todoroki gave her a moment's respite when he managed to get her to stop talking again, but she was still feeling upset over the whole ordeal. Some sort of win would truly go a long way.

Upon learning what the second phase of the exam would entail, Kaede felt that she earned that win. The second phase—the physical exam—was nothing but an obstacle course where they had to get to the goal as quickly as possible by any means necessary. The obstacle course being three kilometers long felt a little daunting, but the impact was lessened by how Present Mic made it clear that it wasn't a race, meaning she only needed to worry about finishing with a good time and not about trying to beat anyone.

She'd like it if she could beat everyone, though.

"Okay, next six runners are on deck, so take your positions!" Present Mic said. Kaede was part of that grouping, so she and Syrup made their way to the starting line. The previous group was making their way back, and as they did, Kaede watched Todoroki get into some sort of fight with a loud boy with a wind-based Quirk. She didn't know what to make of it, but Hououin, who was also in Kaede's group, looked at the scene with a sorrowful glint in her eyes. The glint disappeared the second Hououin caught sight of her and was replaced with a look of determination; a problem for another day, then.

"The thing I really need to focus on is this race," Kaede said. "Syrup, you know what to do, right?" Syrup let out a cry as he floated a little away from Kaede; she decided to take that as a, "Yes". Once Syrup had made enough space between Kaede and himself, he activated his Quirk and shifted into his giant form. The other five runners—Hououin, a girl in a ponytail, a fanged girl with green hair who looked oddly familiar, and two others with no noteworthy features—all stared at the two of them with wide eyes, and their eyes seemed to grow wider as Syrup used his head to hoist Kaede up onto his shell.

"Um, kid, what are you doing?" Present Mic asked.

"This is fine. I filled out all the paperwork, remember?" Kaede asked.

"Oh no, my problem isn't with the flying turtle that spontaneously grew to the size of a bus, that all checks out. My real question is why is it facing the wrong way?"

"Don't worry, he's supposed to do that." Present Mic stared at her for a bit before shrugging his shoulders and walking off. Hououin was looking at her as if Syrup's gigantification was some sort of challenge, and the others were just looking at her funny, plain and simple. It was almost like they've never seen a girl riding a turtle before, or something.

"And go!" Present Mic abruptly called for the race to start. Everyone dashed off the starting line and made for the obstacle course.

Everyone except for Kaede, who had Syrup fire his laser cannon and propel them straight through the course.

"It's working! It's working!" Kaede cheered as she and Syrup flew through the air. The two of them were passing over a variety of obstacles such as pitfall traps, automated turrets and trebuchets, educational television, and pools of sharks with lasers attached to their heads, all of which would make for a thrilling test of strength and strategy for anyone who had to deal with it. Kaede was not one of those people, nor did she want to be. Not when it was easy for her and Syrup to simply propel themselves forward above—and in the case of particularly tall segments, through—all the obstacles. Sure enough, the finish line soon came within view, and Kaede knew that it would only be a matter of seconds until she crossed it.

A matter of seconds later, Syrup's laser abruptly stopped and he came to a halt about three meters away from the finish line.

"No, Syrup, this is the opposite of what we should be doing. Go, go, go!" Even with Kaede's chanting, Syrup refused to move forward. Downward was another story, though, for Syrup then abruptly dropped to the ground and stared backward with a defeated look in his eyes. "Oh, you must have used up all your power just now. It's okay, you don't have to push yourself, but still, why'd you have to stop right here, of all places?"

As Kaede pouted, the sound of fireworks started to fill the air. Kaede turned around to see what appeared to be a ball of fire barreling towards her, or at least towards her general vicinity. In all likelihood, the fireball was one of the other racers, meaning that if Kaede didn't get a move on, she'd only end up with second place, at best.

"What do I do? I can just climb down and try and run the rest of the way, but there's no way I'll be fast enough to cross it in time! I need to think of something before—that's it! Wooly!" A new jewel appeared on Kaede's shield, and with its shimmering glow, four things happened: white wool sprouted around her body; curly horns sprouted out of her head; her hands and feet turned into cloven hooves, though she was somehow still able to hold onto Devour; and finally, the wool expanded further and further outward until it formed a giant ball of wool that Kaede's face poked out of. Syrup, as if he could read her mind, tilted his back ever so slightly so that Kaede would roll off of him and onto the ground where she then proceeded to bounce and roll about until she crossed the finish line.

"And number eighteen bounces her way past the finish line in record time!" Present Mic shouted for everyone to hear.

"Another happy landing," Kaede said as she deactivated her Quirk. The second she did, her victory fully sunk in, and with a smile on her face, she trotted over to Syrup, who had gone back to his original size and fallen closer to her, and squeezed him tight against her wooly body.

"And in second place, we have number three burning out!" The fireball from before landed next to Kaede and Syrup. With it now being so close to her, she was able to see that it was Hououin, who had seemingly shed her clothes and transformed into a being of pure fire.

She was also glaring at her, for some reason.

"Hey, Hououin-san, congratulations on second place," Kaede said. Hououin kept glaring at her. "I know you said you were going to beat me, but I guess you didn't? I don't really care about this stuff, so can we drop it?" Hououin kept glaring at her. "Okay, we should probably head back, so—"

"—doesn't count." Kaede could have sworn she heard Hououin say something.

"Come again?" With the sound of a massive firecracker, Hououin's body turned back to normal. Kaede was relieved to see that she wasn't actually naked and that her clothes vanishing was just an effect of her Quirk.

"This doesn't count! This doesn't count at all!" At the same time, she was confused to see that she was crying.

"Um, Houou—"

"This doesn't count as a loss because I only lost to your turtle, not you! I would have won if it was just you, so don't act like something so unfair means anything!"

"I never—"

"You're not so great just because you beat me here! I'm still Kyouma Hououin, and I'm going to beat you for real next time, no matter what animal you turn into!"

"I actually don't normally do this. Sometimes, when I activate a Quirk that I created, my body mutates the way it would if I was born with that Quirk—"

"Stop it! Now you won't even let me talk?! Let me have something today, okay?!" Hououin, still crying her heart out, started flailing her arms about randomly until she accidentally hit Kaede's shield. A new jewel appeared on Kaede's shield, and Hououin fell to the ground from the energy drain.

"Ifrit. Uh-huh, uh-huh, oh! This is a neat Quirk!"

"Don't pity me!" Hououin cried. If this was the kind of thing Kaede could expect out of Hououin, then she probably wouldn't be that hard to deal with, in the long run.

* * *

For the practical exam, everyone had been split up across ten artificial cityscapes where they would battle against robots for ten minutes, earning points whenever they destroyed or immobilized one of them. Because students from the same schools couldn't test together, Risa ended up at a different cityscape than Kasumi, and for the same reason, Yui ended up at a different one than Mai's.

"Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no." Mai seemed to be taking separation worse than Risa.

"Hey, don't worry. I'm sure your sister will be just fine," Risa said.

"It's not just Yui I'm worried about. I'm worried for myself, too," Mai said. "Yui and I were supposed to do this together; no one told us we'd be separated like this. If Yui's not around, I don't know what I'll do. This is bad. This is super, super bad."

"Don't be like that. You don't need her to do well here. I'm sure you're great on your own."

"No, no, no, no, no, no. This is bad. This is bad. This is bad. This is bad." Mai kept pacing around while going on and on like that, and Risa let out a sigh. Kaede made impromptu therapy seem easy, but it was clear that there was actually a lot to it.

"And go!" Present Mic's voice sounded out through the air out of nowhere. Everyone looked confused for a second before people started running off into the cityscape.

"I guess we're starting!" Risa started running for a second before she caught sight of Mai simply walking at a normal pace. "Um, Mai—"

"I'm fine. This is what I'm supposed to do," Mai said. Risa didn't understand it in the slightest, but the test was already starting, and if Mai said that what she was doing was normal, then it was probably best for the both of them if Risa just went on her own, and that's exactly what she did.

"Okay, this looks like a normal city with normal buildings and normal streets. Probably won't be any surprises in regards to the layout," Risa said as she ran around with her Quirk fully active. Soon enough, she came across a couple of robots worth one point each.

""Target locked! Prepare for termination!"' the robots said as they charged at her.

"Get 'em, Oboro!" Oboro let out a yip from atop Risa's shoulders and launched fireballs at each of the robots. They tore through them with ease and reduced them to scrap, instantly netting her two points. "I'm pretty confident in my strength, but just to be safe, I'm going to wait until I can jump up to my next level before I fight them. I'm counting on you to help me out until then."

Oboro let out another yip, and the two were off. Every time Risa came across a robot, Oboro wasted no time blasting it with fire. The one-point robots went down in a single shot, the two-point robots took a few, and the three-point robots required actual effort on Oboro's part. Those ones actually managed to launch an attack or two before getting destroyed, but Risa was still fast enough to dodge them and let Oboro take them down. One three-point robot tried to be clever by sending a missile at a building behind Risa. It was timed so that the resulting debris would land exactly where she was about to be, and with her Quirk at the level that it was at, she wouldn't have time to dodge or deflect it.

Fortunately for Risa and unfortunately for the robot, Risa's Quirk managed to jump up a level right then and there. With the extra boost in speed and power, she shattered the falling debris with an uppercut clad in blue aura and sent a fragment flying into the robot with a spinning kick. The fragment of debris hit it with such tremendous force that it tore right through it and instantly sent it offline.

"Now we're really cooking with gas." Risa wished someone other than Oboro had been around to hear that, but there were more important things going on. Risa got started on those more important things by dashing off and punching and kicking every robot she came across, managing to do so even when she ended up in some of the more populated areas of the cityscape. They all tried to fight back, but with her speed and Oboro's fireballs, it was all pointless on their part. None of them were good enough to touch her, and that was just how she liked it.

Time kept on creeping forward; Risa lost track of it a bit, but she could feel that the exam was almost over. She knew that she had more than enough points to end up with a good score, but there was no reason not to do the best that she could, so when she saw another three-point robot, she quickly honed in on it and went for the kill.

The kill came, but it wasn't dealt by her. Rather, it came about from a trio of lightning bolts being fired into the robot that blew it up when she was right in front of it. Risa and Oboro were caught in the ensuing shockwave and knocked into a stoplight; it wasn't that hard of a hit, easy enough to bounce back from, but it still reset Top Gear back to its base level.

"Oh, were you gunning for that guy? Sorry, you snooze, you lose." Of course, it was the catgirl who was talking to her; she was even perched on top of a telephone pole as if to emphasize how much she was looking down on her. If nothing else, now she was okay with being mad at someone.

"What the hell is your problem?!" Risa asked.

"Hey, no one said you can't kill steal. As the old saying goes, 'Don't hate the player, hate the game'," the catgirl said.

"That's not the problem here! You had to have known I was going after that one, so if you were going to take it, why'd you wait until I was close enough to get caught in the blast?"

"Did I, though? Felt like a coincidence to me. Sure is nice to know that I was right about that aura only appearing if you manage to avoid taking a hit, though. Definitely explains why you were so carefully avoiding combat in the beginning."

"How would you—Wait, you've been spying on me?!" The catgirl merely grinned, prompting a growl from Oboro. "I oughta come up there and—"

"I wouldn't if I were you. Attacking another applicant is against the rules, remember? I'm just happy with you not getting _too_ high a score; no need for you to not get in at all. Oh, and before you try and throw this back in my face, it's not my fault you got caught up in an attack that definitely wasn't aimed at you." Sparks were starting to pop out of Oboro's mouth.

"Oh my God, what is your problem?! First that stuff with the glasses guy, now this? Why are you messing with me so much?"

"Are you mad?"

"Obviously!"

"That's all I could ever hope for," the catgirl said while flashing a smirk down at her. Risa was very tempted to simply climb up there and punch her in the face, rules be damned. She was probably just blowing smoke in spite of it all, but the question of whether or not she would actually do anything was completely put on the back burner when she heard a massive rumbling sound. Looking up beyond the catgirl, Risa saw the lumbering form of a giant robot that could only be the zero-pointer.

In her opinion, the size was just excessive.

"I'm sure you'd love to find a way to give me a little what for, but getting away from that thing is probably of higher priority, right? I know I'm right, so ta-ta for now. I mean, assuming I didn't set you _too _far back." The catgirl jumped down—Risa rolled an eye when she landed perfectly on her feet—and ran off before anything aside from more growling from Oboro could be done.

"I hope she gets in, because one of these days, I _will_ punch that girl in the face," Risa said while petting Oboro to calm him down. In the time she spent doing that, the zero-pointer had started walking in her direction, and with it came a swarm of people trying to escape its warpath. Risa was about to join them, but she found herself stopping when the robot started to lift itself off the ground in everyone's direction. The idea of a giant flying robot didn't sit well with Risa, and it only served to further dissuade her from attempting to have anything to do with it.

However, as it turned out, the zero-pointer wasn't going after them anymore. It went into the air at a ludicrously high speed in an arch far above Risa and the rest of the applicants. As it did, its body started breaking apart at the seams with various parts falling in random spots around the cityscape, and what was left of it all exploded in midair. It was obvious that the robot wasn't in the air because it was flying, but because it had been launched into the air with an attack strong enough to destroy it. Risa shuddered at the thought of someone other than Kaede being able to do something like that.

"I did it! I finally got one!" Risa shuddered a little less when she saw Mai jumping up and down with glee while oil dripped off of her right hand. It was obvious that Mai was the one responsible, somehow managing to punch it into submission.

The thought of that brought back the shuddering.

"Um, yeah. Good job, Mai," Risa said after running over to her side.

"I know! Did you see the size of that thing? It's gotta be worth a quadrillion points! I'm going to pass, for sure!"

"What? Mai, that was the zero-pointer." Mai stopped jumping around and cheering herself on.

"What?"

"That was the zero-pointer." Mai blinked twice in confusion. "So it was worth zero points." Mai blinked twice in confusion. "That means you didn't earn anything for beating it."

The realization of what was going on seemed to finally sink in for Mai. It was the only way to explain the crying that was drowned out by Present Mic's declaration that the exam was over. Probably not the best sign in the world.

* * *

Kasumi's day was going rather well, all things considered. The written exam lived up to the expectations she had for U.A., but it was hardly something she couldn't handle. The physical exam seemed like it would be fairly challenging based on how Present Mic described it, but even that wasn't too hard to deal with. The robots weren't particularly powerful, so while she did have her swords destroyed a few times, with quick maneuvering and clever usage of her Quirk, it wasn't that hard to deal with them.

"And another one down! That's twenty-five for me, how about you?" The main bit of annoyance came about through the boy who wouldn't leave her alone. The name he gave without even being prompted was Shin Bunretsu, and he decided all on his own that the two of them should make a contest out of who can destroy the most robots. Kasumi thought he was hitting on her, but as it turned out, it was because he knew she was from the Kensei Family and wanted to see how well he measured against her; she honestly wasn't sure if flirting would have been a better alternative. The response to the proposal for either reasoning would have been—and in the case of reality, was—a resounding refusal, but even with that, Bunretsu still stuck to her like glue to constantly remind her how many robots he had destroyed.

"Come on Kensei, how many—" A three-pointer came into view, and Kasumi wasted no time in launching several purple aura swords at it to shatter it into bits.

"That would make thirty for me." Bunretsu's behavior was annoying, but it would have been downright unbearable if she actually allowed herself to lose.

"Man, you really are a cut above the rest," Bunretsu said with a whistle.

"Comes with the territory of my name, I suppose," Kasumi said. She did her best to separate from Bunretsu, but he was astonishingly quick on his feet.

"You know, I feel like that might have rubbed you the wrong way."

"How very astute of you."

"It was meant as a compliment, though. It's cool that you come from such a famous family like that."

"I would like to believe that there's more to my character than just my name."

"Not saying there isn't, but it _does _add to your character, not to mention how it'll make my victory even sweeter."

"You really don't seem to be getting it at all." Bunretsu looked at her as if she had suddenly sprouted a second head. "My point exactly. Besides, it doesn't even matter since you won't even be able to—"

"Heads up!" Four more robots came into view. Bunretsu jumped in front of Kasumi before she could attack and threw his spiked baseball bat at one of the robots. From there, his Quirk—Division, she thinks he addressed it by—created three additional copies of the bat. Each one hit a robot, and they then kept flying around and pummeling them until each of the robots fell offline. "That's twenty-nine!"

"Great."

"I'm catching up to you, Kensei."

"Good for you."

"Oh, look! There's two more! I think I'll just help myself to those guys and be on my merry—" Kasumi charged past Bunretsu and got in front of the two robots in a matter of seconds. Before either one could make a move, she summoned Yukari into one hand, Futsu-no-mitama into another, and attacked them with a spinning maneuver that cut them both in half and left the pieces to fall to the ground.

"Thirty-two. Satisfied?" Kasumi asked.

"I'm not _dis_satisfied. That's the kind of feeling you should get out of a good rivalry, though," Bunretsu said with a smile.

"That's not what this is, so stop acting like—Oh no." In the middle of her ranting, purple smoke started leaking out of Kasumi's body before an entire cloud exploded out of her. Kasumi internally cursed; she didn't realize she had exerted herself to such an extent. She could already feel her body being afflicted with the negative consequences of her Quirk. She wanted to try and slip away before the smoke completely faded away, but she knew she'd just trip over her clothes, and even if she didn't, the ever-persistent Bunretsu would catch up to her in no time. There was no way to avoid embarrassment, so Kasumi decided to face it head-on. As such, when the smoke cleared, Bunretsu got a full look at her in her new diminutive state of being.

Also as such, she threw a rock at him when he started laughing at her.

"What was that for?!" Bunretsu asked.

"What do you think it was for?!" Kasumi asked as she struggled to keep her now loose clothes up.

"Hey, you can't blame me for laughing. Anyone would laugh if they saw someone like you turn into something like this."

"I suppose my friends are simply of better stock than you, then."

"Hey, we're dealing with things that go beyond friendship here."

"Says you!" Kasumi had more to say to Bunretsu, but she stopped herself when she heard a massive rumbling sound. Looking up beyond Bunretsu, Kasumi saw the lumbering form of a giant robot that could only be the zero-pointer.

In her opinion, the size was just excessive.

"That's not good," Bunretsu said. The zero-pointer had started walking in her direction, and with it came a swarm of people trying to escape its warpath. "That's _really_ not good! Want me to carry you to safety?"

"I am capable of fleeing all on my own, thank you very much." Before Kasumi had a chance to prove that claim to Bunretsu, the robot started to lift itself off the ground in everyone's direction. The idea of a giant flying robot wouldn't have sat well with Kasumi even if she could still use her Quirk and was at her normal size, and it only served to further dissuade her from attempting to have anything to do with it.

However, as it turned out, the zero-pointer wasn't going after them anymore. It went into the air at a ludicrously high speed in an arch far above Kasumi and the rest of the applicants. As it did, its body started breaking apart at the seams with various parts falling in random spots around the cityscape, and what was left of it all exploded in midair. It was obvious that the robot wasn't in the air because it was flying, but because it had been launched into the air with an attack strong enough to destroy it. Kasumi shuddered at the thought of someone other than Kaede being able to do something like that.

"I did it! I finally got one!" Kasumi shuddered a little less when she saw Yui jumping up and down with glee while oil dripped off of her left hand. It was obvious that Yui was the one responsible, somehow managing to punch it into submission.

The thought of that brought back the shuddering.

"Friend of yours?" Bunretsu asked. Kasumi didn't answer him as she waddled off towards Yui. At the very least, he seemed to finally get the message and walked off in the other direction.

"Good job, Yui-san. You seemed nervous before the exam started, so it's nice to see that you've calmed yourself," Kasumi said.

"Yeah! Did you see the size of that thing? It's gotta be worth a quadrillion points! I'm going to pass, for sure!"

"What? Yui-san, that was the zero-pointer." Yui stopped jumping around and cheering herself on.

"What?"

"That was the zero-pointer." Yui blinked twice in confusion. "So it was worth zero points." Yui blinked twice in confusion. "That means you didn't earn anything for beating it."

The realization of what was going on seemed to finally sink in for Yui. It was the only way to explain the crying that was drowned out by Present Mic's declaration that the exam was over. Probably not the best sign in the world.

* * *

While Kaede, Risa, Kasumi, and the Kinniku twins were occupied with their attempts at getting into the Hero course, Isuzu was occupied with her own attempts at getting into the Support department. The written exam was a breeze for someone with her brains to work through, and she ended up finishing with enough time for a second breakfast. By the time her second breakfast was finished, it was already time for the main event for her department: the invention showcase. Every new applicant had to present an invention to Power Loader, the head of the Support department, for evaluation; the better crafted and more useful it was, the higher chance you had of getting into the class.

"I've definitely got this," Isuzu said. She lapped up the last remnants of her pudding cup as she finished setting up her invention for evaluation. "Done! What do you think?"

"I think it's a pile of junk," Power Loader said.

"It is _not _a—oh wait, it totally is. Sorry, I jumped the gun there." In her haste to finish the exam, Isuzu had left her invention as little more than a pile of hologram projectors, titanium plating, microbots, gunpowder, and sky blue paint. Isuzu pulled her goggles down over her eyes and quickly remedied that with her Alchemy Quirk. Blue lightning shot out from contact with the assorted objects until they were combined into a luminescent, sky blue, circular-shaped device. Pile of junk no more.

"I present to you the latest in shield-based weaponry. This shield can take a punch from even the toughest of Heroes and not receive a single dent, and the compact welding of the titanium alloy makes it easy to carry around for long hours."

"That's certainly impressive, but is that it? The light show was nice and all, but my students are expected to be able to create things that can go a little more above and beyond than this."

"I thought you might say that. Catch." Isuzu threw her shield at Power Loader, and without asking, he put it on his wrist. "Okay, now it's time for things to get really fun." Isuzu reached into her bag and pulled out a kukri knife she made at home out of razor blades, hedge clippers, and a kukri knife. "This'll work best if you just don't move."

"What do you mean?"

"Nock!"

"What are you—Don't do it. You better not do it."

"Draw!"

"I swear to God, if you throw that at me, I will—"

"Loose!" Isuzu threw her kukri knife in an arch at Power Loader in exactly the right way to ensure that he would block it with the shield and deflect it into the air. So far, it was all according to plan.

"What did I just say?! First Hatsume, now you, how many of you kids are going to try and kill me today?!"

"Can't speak for this Hatsume person, but this was all necessary as you'll find out in—" Isuzu was cut off when her airborne kukri knife exploded in midair. "Damn. I thought I timed it so that wouldn't happen until I finished counting back from three. There's nothing dramatic about this, nothing in the slightest."

"Forget your dramatics, kid! What in the world was _that_?!" She didn't want to forget her dramatics, but she was supposed to be passing a test, so it was best to get back to that.

"That is the main course of the full course meal that is my shield. When something bounces off of it, it releases a series of explosive microbots that attach themselves to the enemy that then, well, explode. I call it the Skyboom Shield; the 'Sky' part comes from the color and the direction you should send things in, and the 'boom' part should be rather self-explanatory."

"You bet it is!" Power Loader said as he put the shield down on the ground. "Gotta say, kid, this is pretty damn impressive. One of the best I've seen all day, by far!" Isuzu would physically pat herself on the back to complement the mental patting later. For now, it was time to reward herself with a victory moon pie. "Why a shield, though? Not that it doesn't work, but you'd think an offensive weapon would be easier to use."

"If the best defense is a good offense, then the opposite should be true, as well," Isuzu said between bites of her moon pie. "I say that, but when it comes down to it, I probably just had a certain someone on my mind the whole time I was working. A pretty good someone to have on the brain, though."

* * *

"There! All nice and squeaky clean!" While sitting in an empty classroom, Kaede passed her time by using the wind-based Quirk she copied from the loud boy Todoroki fought with when they crossed paths by the bathrooms to blow off any dirt Syrup had stuck to him and by using her sweater to make his shell as shiny as possible; she succeeded on both fronts. Kaede was at the last stage of the exam, the interview, so she needed to make sure the both of them looked their best and wouldn't lose points for a slovenly appearance. She also needed to make sure she didn't say anything stupid, but it was better to worry about the problems that would be easy to fix.

"So, how's your test been going?" someone asked in conjunction with the door opening.

"Fine, I think. I did really well on the physical exam, but I know I messed up bad on the written exam," Kaede said.

"I'm sure you'll do fine. You won't get far in life if you're too stressed out about stuff."

"I know, but—Whoa!"

"Whoa." Kaede finally took stock of who it was she was talking to. Dressed in a blue gi with a quarterstaff slung over his arm, the right half of his body was that of a normal blue-haired man, minus the scar that stretched out from the side of his eye, and the left half of his body was covered from head to toe in golden armor that featured large locks and valves and seemed to be welded into his flesh—it was definitely molded around his mouth to make it so it would move whenever he spoke. Despite the somewhat monstrous appearance he bore, he still looked at Kaede with a smile. Kaede only knew of one Hero who could do that and still look the way he did.

"You're the Number Four Hero, Loud Cloud!" Syrup joined her in her excitement.

"Please, I'm off the clock. Just call me 'Oboro'."

"I'm actually friends with a fox named Oboro, so can I just call you 'Shirakumo'?" Loud Cloud either blinked twice or winked twice; it was hard to tell when only one eye was showing.

"Weird flex, but okay," Shirakumo said, sitting down at a chair in front of Kaede.

"Since when do you teach at U.A.?"

"For the last three years, actually. Did you not know that? It was pretty big news when I first started."

"I don't read the paper that much, not since they stopped publishing Crust's musings column. Besides, I guess I sort of always have it locked in my head that you're always out of the country on some top-secret mission with Interpol."

"Is that right? Always nice to have people remember that." Shirakumo let out a small laugh, but it didn't sound like he thought something was funny. "You know, you're asking me too many questions. I'm supposed to be interviewing you, remember?"

"Interview away, Mr. Shirakumo!" The laugh he let out that time sounded more genuine.

"My first question is the most important one and the one that'll set the mood for the rest of the interview: Why do you want to be a Hero?"

"So people won't get hurt!" Kaede said without skipping a beat.

"That's pretty noble. How do you plan on doing that?"

"By making sure I can't get hurt!"

"With your shield? You'll need more than that, you know."

"No, it's enough. I just need to keep filling it with Quirks, that's all." Shirakumo raised an eyebrow; it might have been more than one, but there was no way to tell.

"What does that mean?"

"You see my shield? It lets me copy someone's Quirk whenever I touch them with it, and the more Quirks I copy, the higher my defense gets."

"And how many do you have now?"

"I don't know, probably three or four—"

"That's not a lot, but I guess you can—"

"Hundred." Shirakumo nearly fell back in his chair.

"Three or four hundred?! How?! Why?! How?!"

"I told you how: with my shield! Sometimes I just touch people when they aren't looking, other times they give them to me because I either tell them what Quirk their baby will have or they feel grateful that I helped them with an emotional problem. The second one happens more often than you think."

"Okay, but why though? There's no way you need that many. I mean, I bet just having a few dozen already made you harder than steel."

"If people can bend spoons made of steel, then steel isn't good enough!" Just the thought of her finger being bent backward like she was involved in some magician's magic show sent a chill down her spine.

"The idea of getting hurt in the slightest seems to really affect you."

"I have self-diagnosed traumatophobia. Sometimes people say that it's all in my head, but it's not."

"Couldn't you just go to a doctor to settle this?"

"But what if he tests it out by sticking needles in me? I don't want needles to go inside me!"

"I'm not sure they even _could_ go inside you." Kaede and Syrup both pouted at him. "Okay, so how many Quirks do you think it'll take for you to be completely comfortable?"

"Probably all of them." The look on Shirakumo's half of a face clearly said, "Why did I bother asking?" An appropriate expression, since it was a rather stupid question.

"You really think you need every Quirk in the world to feel safe?"

"Yep! And not just because it'll keep me from getting punched. If I have every Quirk in the world, then Villains won't be able to beat me because I'll already know all of their moves. They won't be able to hurt me, and if they can't hurt me, then there's no way they'll be able to hurt innocent people."

"So in the end, this all comes down to you just wanting to be tough enough to protect people."

"That's right! Makes sense, doesn't it?" Shirakumo just stared at her before letting out another laugh. That one felt the most genuine out of all of them.

"You're a good kid, Honjo, I hope you know that. You can go now if you want."

"Really? That's it?"

"Yep. I got everything I thought I'd get out of talking to you, and I'm pretty happy with the results." Kaede thanked him for his time and she and Syrup made for the door.

"I hope I can see you when school starts up!"

"Me too, kid." Only half of his face was showing, but Kaede knew he was giving a full smile, and with that, she was able to leave the room in a good mood.

"Why were you speaking with Loud Cloud?" Hououin suddenly being in her face didn't exactly dampen it, but it didn't do much to brighten it.

"I was just having my interview, that's all."

"What? But Present Mic is supposed to be conducting all the interviews. He interviewed everyone who came before you, including me, so why are you the only one to have a different interviewer?"

"I am?" She wanted to say that she didn't know anything about that, but the look on Hououin's face told her that she wouldn't listen to her.

"This doesn't mean anything, you know?! Just because you got some sort of special interview that no one else got doesn't—I'll beat you next time, you hear me?! Next time, the valorous flames of Kyouma Hououin will burn you to ash!" Hououin ran off shouting more random things of that nature.

All Kaede could think was that she was very bad at being intimidating.

* * *

The exams finally concluded; nearly everyone who exited the building looked defeated in one way or another, and Risa was one of those people. More than anything, she hated that she was the first of her friends to make it out of the building; the alone time forced her thoughts to go back to the catgirl who wouldn't stop bothering her just because she felt like it. She was already feeling nervous about how she did on the exam, so the last thing she needed was to be unable to forget how annoyed she was made to feel, yet there it was.

"E-Excuse me!" A brief respite came about when someone decided to strike up a conversation with her; it was the green-haired boy she saw two times earlier that day.

"Oh, hey. What happened to your sweats?" Risa asked, noticing that the green sweats poking out of his bag seemed to be ripped and burnt in various spots.

"J-Just a little hiccup with my Quirk, that's all! I'm still not that great with it, so—Um, I just wanted to say I'm sorry!"

"Sorry for what?"

"E-Earlier in the lecture hall, that guy wouldn't have yelled at you if he wasn't yelling at me first. You got in trouble because you got caught up in what I was doing, s-so I just wanted to apologize for that in case I never get another chance to!" If Risa hadn't spent over ten years being friends with Kaede, that much sincerity would be downright suffocating.

"You don't have to apologize, man. Neither one of us did anything wrong. That glasses guy was the one being a butt, and I put him in his place, remember? Besides, me getting chewed out probably would have happened even without you being there." Now she was feeling annoyed again. Great. "Also, what's this stuff about not getting another chance to say something? I'm sure you'll get in just fine."

"It'd be nice to believe that." Risa didn't need people other than her feeling negative, so she picked up Oboro, brought him to the green-haired boy's face, and had him lick one of his freckles.

"This is something my friend would think of, so I don't know how well it works for me. How'd it go?"

"F-F-Fine! I-I should get going now, bye!" The green-haired boy, suddenly red in the face, ran off the property like his life depended on it. There might have been something to that "inability to talk to women Quirk" idea.

"Risa!" Of course, Risa got equally red when Kaede hugged her out of nowhere from behind.

"Hey, come on, people are watching!" Risa said as she wormed her way out of Kaede's vice-like grip. "Wait, why are you all sheepish?"

"No, I'm feeling pretty—Oh, right, I guess I forgot about that. Release!" Kaede's body went back to normal as she deactivated her Quirks. "I kinda miss being fluffy, though? Which is better, normal me or fluffy me?"

"They, you know, both have their appeal." Kaede smiled as Risa tucked her face behind her scarf, and so did Isuzu and Kasumi when they joined the two of them. She only liked seeing that smile on Kaede, though, because she didn't want to think about what the other two were thinking behind their smiles. "Oh, have you seen Mai-chan and Yui-chan?"

"They already left. I tried to get them to wait for you guys, but they seemed to be in a pretty bad funk. I'm guessing Yui's performance was just as bad as her sister's."

"I wouldn't be surprised if that were the case. Yui-san certainly didn't look pleased with herself," Kasumi said.

"I hope they end up with good scores, regardless. I'd hate for those precious little girls to not be able to get in," Isuzu said.

"I'm sure it'll all work out," Kaede said. "After all, it'd be a lot less fun if we all couldn't get in, right?"

"Yeah, it would." That was all Risa could manage to say, and it was all she needed to say.

With Kaede and the rest of her friends smiling in front of her, all of her negative thoughts were flushed right out of her system.

* * *

**Top Ten Scores**

**Katsuki Bakugou Villain Points: 77 Rescue Points: 0 Total: 77**

**Kasumi Kensei Villain Points: 50 Rescue Points: 26 Total: 76**

**Risa Shiramine Villain Points 47 Rescue Points: 28 Total: 75**

**Eijirou Kirishima Villain Points: 39 Rescue Points: 35 Total: 74**

**Ochaco Uraraka Villain Points: 28 Rescue Points: 45 Total: 73**

**Ibara Shiozaki Villain Points: 36 Rescue Points: 32 Total: 68**

**Itsuka Kendou Villain Points: 25 Rescue Points: 40 Total: 65**

**Shin Bunretsu Villain Points: 49 Rescue Points: 13 Total: 62 **

**Tenya Iida Villain Points: 52 Rescue Points: 9 Total: 61**

**Izuku Midoriya Villain Points: 0 Rescue Points: 60 Total: 60**

**Honorable Mention:**

**Mai Kinniku and Yui Kinniku Villain Points: 0 Rescue Points: 0 Total: 0**

* * *

**Students to Get In on Recommendation:**

**1\. Shouto Todoroki**

**2\. Kyouma Hououin**

**3\. Kaede Honjo**

**4\. Momo Yaoyorozu**

* * *

**Name: Oboro Shirakumo**

**Oboro Shirakumo, better known as the "Stone Monkey Hero, Loud Cloud", is a man of unparalleled strength and charisma. His ability to lead and encourage others is unmatched, his understanding of his Quirk is at genius level, everything about him is of high caliber. Shirakumo is so talented that during his junior year, he was recruited by Interpol to assist them with a top-secret mission outside of the country, a mission that required such a high level of security from him that he had to fake his own death and remain legally dead until he returned to Japan seven years ago. While his seven-year-long mission did leave him severely wounded, as evidenced by his famous Golden Fillet, he never lost his spirit, and once his mission—the first of many—was over, he went on to become the Number Four Hero.**

***All of this is true according to public record and does not warrant questioning.**

***Other achievements of Shirakumo include winning Japan's Teacher of the Year Award three years in a row, ranking fifth on the list of Heroes who Look Like Villains, and being the best man at the wedding of Shouta Aizawa and Emi Fukukado.**

* * *

**Name: The Demon King of the Seventh Heaven, Kyouma Hououin (Kyouma Hououin)!**

**Quirk: Ifrit**

***I burn with the fury of a thousand suns (Allows Kyouma to manipulate, and turn her body into, fire)!**

***I will never touch the ground, for I cannot be bound to the Earth like some paltry being! (Kyouma is capable of flight while her Quirk is active)! **

****You are not worthy of knowing more than this (Updates on all information pending)!**

* * *

**Name: Shin Bunretsu**

**Quirk: Division**

***Shin can divide something he touches with his hands into ten identical copies. The copies can then be moved with his mind.**

****Updates on all information pending.**

* * *

**Name: Kaede Honjo**

**Quirk: Devour**

***Creates an indestructible shield that attaches itself to her left hand. If Kaede is ever more than a meter than a half away from her shield, either the shield will be teleported to her hand or she'll be teleported to the shield.**

***Holding the shield causes Kaede's natural defense to increase and make certain attacks painless. The boost in defense increases as Kaede increases the number of Quirks she copied.**

***If the shield makes contact with a Quirk user, their energy will be drained and Kaede will obtain a copy of their Quirk, along with complete knowledge of how it works. Once she has copied ten Quirks, all new Quirks are sent into an "inventory" for later use.**

***When Kaede falls asleep for at least one hour, all of the Quirks in her shield are taken out and put into her inventory. Kaede is then free to install as many Quirks as she wants into her shield, and she can keep taking Quirks from her inventory over the course of the day until the first time she reaches ten Quirks.**

***Copied Quirks can only be activated by saying their name out loud. In addition, Kaede can combine her Quirks into new ones. Quirks used for this are immediately erased and have to be copied again to be usable.**

***Devour cannot copy the Quirks of animals.**

***When Kaede uses a Quirk created through the combination of multiple Quirks, there is a chance that her body will mutate in the way that it would have if that Quirk had been the Quirk she was born with. This lasts until she formally deactivates her Quirks, and if she is using multiple Quirks that activate this condition, her mutation will only be the mutation for the last Quirk she used.**

***Kaede's Active Quirks:**

****Plastic Love**

****Wooly**

****Ifrit(Kyouma Hououin)**

****Whirlwind(Loud Boy)**

***Quirks in Inventory:**

****Long Neck(Random kid)**

****Muscle Growth(Random kid)**

****Glamour(Random kid)**

****Earphone Jack(Random kid)**

****Life Force(Kyudai Garaki)**

****Bouncy Laser(Sugiko Honjo)**

****Stretchy Fingers(Friend of pomeranian boy)**

****Puffy Cheeks(Random kid)**

****Rock Fist(Random kid)**

****Nitro Wings**

****High-Speed Portal Cutter**

****Shield(Crust)**

****Top Gear(Risa Shiramine)**

****Burning Letters(Shy)**

****Gas(Spirits)**

****Restaurering(Lady Black)**

****Sleeping Strike(Meng Long)**

****Tape(Random kid)**

****Triple Spark**

****Lizard Tail Splitter(Random kid)**

****Centaur(Random customer)**

****Minotaur(Random customer)**

****Minnocence**

****Leap(Pop Step)**

****Slide and Glide(The Hauler)**

****Air Slide**

****Earth Flow(Pixie-Bob)**

****Gatling(Gunhead)**

****Earth Bullets**

****Lip Service(Random customer)**

****Book Maker(Random customer)**

****Angry Umbrella(Random customer)**

****Duto Dodge(Random customer)**

****Dark Elbow(Random customer)**

****Sabotage Beam(Random customer)**

****Spring Grocery(Random customer)**

****Noisy Summer Beetle(Random customer)**

****Beautification**

****Alchemy(Isuzu Haganeno)**

****Transform(Himiko Toga)**

****Rabbit(Mirko)**

****Slipknot(Climb Anything-Man)**

****Seiryu(Azulong)**

****Big Step(Rapid Rabbit/Big Sis Hayate)**

****Stinger(Honey Trap/Big Sis Hani)**

****Heel Stinger**

****Mummification(Mummy)**

****Fierce Wings(Hawks)**

****Dog(Hound Dog)**

****Stronghold(Barrierfreeman)**

**********Infinite Creation of Swords(Kasumi)****

****Etcetera, etcetera**

***Discarded Quirks:**

****Explosion(Pomeranian boy)**

****Wings(Friend of pomeranian boy)**

****Knives Out(Matsuda Honjo)**

****Warp Gate(Kurogiri)**

****Spark(Random kid)**

****Matchstick(Random kid)**

****Lighter(Random kid)**

****Elasticity(Gentle Criminal)**

****Love(La Brava)**

****Charm(Saito)**

****Hair-Raiser(Mr. Brave)**

****Hair Extension(Random kid)**

****Cow(Cow Lady)**

****Etcetera, etcetera**

*****Updates on all information pending**


	6. First Impressions

Despite having a reputation as the man who moved too fast, Hawks really did like to relax whenever he had the chance. If one were to ask him about it, relaxing as much as possible was the best thing a Hero could do for themselves. It kept them rested for whenever the next job would happen, and the fact that they could do it at all meant that they were living in times that were peaceful enough to allow for them to rest. The exact things people could do with their newly allotted rest varied from person to person, but he felt that there were some universal allowances provided by the concept such as sleeping in late, eating in restaurants without having to worry about catching a virus, and typing out the rough draft of your gothic horror spaghetti Western screenplay in a coffee shop without worrying about the barista being nosy and asking questions; one of those might have been more personal than the others, but as far as Hawks was concerned, the point still stood firm.

As such, it was rather surprising that the board of directors for the Hero Public Safety Commission had the nerve to yell at him for being late to the morning meeting because of a lengthy coffee run, even though they were the ones who decided to have it at six in the morning of all times; for some reason, bringing up that the coffee in the building was terrible didn't help to lighten the mood. What was done was done, he supposed.

"You know, with all of you being like this, I'm kinda glad I didn't buy any donuts," Hawks said as he leaned back in his chair.

"I'm sure my cholesterol will be thanking you tomorrow," said the President of the Commission, her tone and expression as cold and lacking in humor as it was the day Hawks first met her. Always a pleasure, that one. "Now that we're all here and giving at least the bare minimum of attention, we can get to the topic of today's meeting."

_Today's ungodly early meeting_, Hawks though as the President picked up a remote control off of the table. She turned around to face the projection screen at the end of the board room and, with a press of a button, turned it on to display a rather unflattering picture of one Kaede Honjo; Hawks had no idea why they always used the sneezing picture.

"To think we're already at the day where Kaede Honjo would be attending U.A. Feels like only yesterday that we first started to take notice of her potential threat level," said a board member whose head vaguely resembled a baked potato covered in bacon bits.

"It was already worth noticing when she was a child, but ten years and hundreds of Quirks later, and the situation's become even more insane," said a board member whose head vaguely resembled a hardboiled egg covered in mayonnaise.

"And now that she's going to be further molded by a Hero school like U.A., there's no telling what will happen," said a board member whose head vaguely resembled a burrito covered in hot sauce; it was possible that Hawks' breakfast might have been lighter than he thought it was. "Those schools have too much leniency in how they handle their students and too little accountability for what happens to them. Ideally, nothing wrong will happen, but the fact that there's a risk factor at all will never not be troubling."

"I know, right? It's a shame that the girl was never a wide-eyed orphan who you all could just pick up off the street. I hear people like that are the easiest—and most cost-effective—to manipulate," Hawks said. Everyone started looking at him, but he didn't care and just let the comment hang in the air for all it was.

"Oh, so you actually do feel like contributing, then?" the President asked.

"If pointing out how stupid you're all being counts as contributing, then sure, why not?"

"Just because you choose to ignore the issue doesn't mean that there isn't one," Potato Head said.

"Just because you choose to make an issue doesn't mean that there is one, either. As the only one in this room who's actually met the girl and bothered to follow her on social media, I can say that that girl's about as dangerous as a turtle."

"Like her pet turtle? The one that was used in illegal Quirk experimentation, can grow to the size of a bus, and can fire a laser that can decimate a building in an instant?" Hardboiled Egg Head asked. Hawks had to admit that that wasn't the best simile he could have used.

"At least make an attempt to look at this rationally, Hawks," Burrito Head said. The President changed the slide to project an image of three different people: a man wrapped up in red bandages, a young girl with sharp teeth and messy hair, and a man whose body was made out of pure shadows. "The underground hitman, Hoyo Makihara; a burgeoning sociopath, Himiko Toga; a Villain tied to hundreds of murders and abductions, Kurogiri. All of these people were highly dangerous individuals, and all of them were defeated by Kaede Honjo, one of them even falling to her when she was only four years old."

The fight with Kurogiri led to Kyudai Garaki being exposed as a madman and Oboro Shirakumo returning to the world, and dealing with Himiko Toga resulted in her getting help before her mental issues could make her a danger to anyone, but of course, all of that went unmentioned.

"All you're doing is making a point about why she's a good kid and why this whole thing is just a waste of the taxpayers' money. What's the point in trying to keep tabs on someone just because they have an overpowered Quirk? Even if it is similar to the Quirk of some major bad guy—"

"That 'major bad guy' is the man who has tried to control this country from the shadows since Quirks first appeared, a man who we can't even be sure All Might managed to kill properly," the President interjected. "A man that dangerous has been plaguing our society since its inception, and with it being possible that another person like him could arise, are we not supposed to monitor the situation just because she's a child?" It was clear that Hawks wasn't going to get anywhere with her, so he elected to keep his mouth shut. Still, the fact that they thought Kaede going to U.A. could lead to her becoming some sort of tyrant was ridiculous; if anything, going by his own personal hang ups, going to any sort of school would only have a positive outcome on Kaede.

The Public Safety Commission wasn't interested in the positives, of course. Only the negatives.

"Fighting like this is pointless. The only thing that needs to be done today is give us all a refresher of what our objective is: watching Kaede Honjo's career with great interest. If she dedicates her life to heroism or just ends up becoming a dullard, then fine. However, if she starts to walk the path of a Villain, then for the sake of everyone in this nation, we must do everything in our power to stop her."

_Of course, we do_, Hawks thought, still finding himself hard-pressed to come up with a scenario that would have Kaede doing anything even remotely antagonistic. The more things stayed like that, the better.

* * *

"How could you do this to us, Kaede-chan? We're supposed to be friends!" Kaede had a wicked smirk as Isuzu made a futile cry for help.

"Friends? Is that what you thought this thing was? Just how naive can you get?" Kaede's question was punctuated with a malicious laugh.

"To think that you were even capable of pulling such a dirty trick. I never would have expected it from you," Kasumi said, looking about as frustrated as Kaede had wanted her to look.

"If you can say that with a straight face, then I guess you never truly understood me."

"Kaede, I'm begging you, please don't do this!" Seeing Risa get so worked up over the situation at hand almost moved Kaede's heart enough to have her consider changing her course of action, but in the end, even Risa wasn't enough to make it happen.

"Sorry, Risa, but this is the way it has to be. At the very least, take solace in the knowledge that you could have prevented this." With the despair of the situation firmly set into everyone's minds, Kaede made her final move to end it all.

She played the last card in her hand and congratulated herself on winning a game of Tycoon.

"Aw, man! I knew I should have kept my 2s a little longer!" Risa said, tapping away on her phone in an attempt to at least get away with second place, something Kaede was rooting for. "If I had a card that could have forced you to pass, you wouldn't have had a chance to do a Revolution and screw everything up for everyone!"

"Too bad, Risa. Screwing things up for the lower class is what us rich folk excel at." Syrup let out an enthusiastic cry as he sat atop Kaede's head.

"As the only rich person here, I take offense to that remark, especially since I couldn't even manage second place because Risa-san cheats," Kasumi said; Kaede was quick to high five Risa in celebration, Oboro letting out a few yelps from Risa's shoulder to go along with it.

"I suppose this is the kind of clever thinking that's to be expected from someone who manages to get into U.A. on recommendation," Isuzu said as Kasumi managed to secure third place and make her the morning's biggest loser. With the game finished, everyone put their phones away, and by coincidence, they had all finished their walk to U.A. at that time.

U.A. High School. The school they would all be attending for the next three years in the pursuit of becoming Heroes. For the entire month that had gone by since the test results were given out, Kaede had been nothing but ecstatic over how she and all of her friends managed to make it into the school of their dreams, the four of them even managing to get into the same class; granted, she had no idea if Mai and Yui managed to get in, but she wanted to believe that they did because that was the better way of looking at things. The best part about it all was that she managed to do it without even getting a little hurt, and if everything went the way it should, she'd keep adding Quirks to her arsenal and make it even harder for her to get hurt. Life would be very sweet if it could progress that way.

As Kaede kept thinking about how happy she was with her present circumstances, the group was stopped at the entrance by Principal Nedzu, of all people. It had been two years since Kaede had seen Nedzu, and with him looking as adorable as ever, she wanted to pet him all over like she did when she was younger, but he stopped her dead in her tracks and told the group to follow him.

"First of all, since I have you here, I would like to congratulate the four of you for not only earning your way into U.A., but doing so with some of the highest performances in your class," Nedzu said as he led them down a variety of hallways. "I'm especially proud of your success, Honjo-kun. Earning your place through recommendation is no easy feat, but it seems that I was correct to put my faith in your ability to do just that. Of course, you're not the only interesting students in this year's freshman class. Todoroki-kun, Hououin-kun, and Yaoyorozu-kun are the other students who managed to get in on recommendation, and they've each got their own unique strengths. There's also Bakugou-kun who placed first in the practical, even if his personality could use a little work; same goes for Tamura-kun, who probably has one of the more unique Quirks of this class. Speaking of unique Quirks, there's Monoma-kun, who might have some overlap with Honjo-kun, Raiden-kun, who was honestly very luck to make it in, Kohiruimaki-kun, who was good at making use of what she had, Midoriya-kun, who I actually can't talk about too much for a variety of reasons—"

"Hey, does he always talk this much?" Isuzu asked as Nedzu kept rambling on.

"Yeah. It took a really long time for Hayate and Hani to get him to stop talking the last time we met, but it's not a big deal," Kaede said.

"Speak for yourself," Risa said.

"—and that is why I refuse to let the Owl Lady get within two-hundred meters of me. Of course, I didn't really need to say all that, because we all know what she did." It appeared that Nedzu had started and ended a completely different story; Kaede did her best to play along with it all. "Now, back to what I wanted to talk to you about. Honjo-kun, Shiramine-kun, you were both allowed to have Syrup and Oboro registered as support items for the exam because of an oversight on our part, and since it would most certainly take three years to get any changes ratified, you are free to keep working with them. This means that you can bring them with you to Hero Training, and you're free to keep them with you for homeroom and lunch, but they would undoubtedly be a distraction for yourselves and your classmates during your compulsory subjects."

"Does that mean Risa and I have to go back home to drop them off and pick them up? I mean, Syrup can fly, but he's kind of slow," Kaede said.

"And it's against the law," Risa said.

"Well, the whole thing is moot because they're free to stay on campus all day, and where we're heading now is where they can stay when you aren't free to be with them." Before Nedzu could say anything else, he stopped the group at the end of a hallway where saw a door with a cute rendition of Leo the Lion painted on the front. Kaede could feel a bit of heat coming from behind the door, and the heat intensified when Nedzu opened the door and revealed what they had been dragged to.

"Wow!" was all Kaede could say when she was presented with the sight of a vast scene of nature nestled inside a large indoor space. The grass beneath her feet felt entirely real, so it was an easy conclusion to make that the trees and rivers she saw and heard in the distance were probably just as real. Not only that, but a wide assortment of animals such as birds and squirrels and bandicoots were frolicking about, and when Syrup and Oboro left Kaede and Risa to play with them, they all seemed to light up at the sight of them.

"I take it you're all impressed with this?" Nedzu asked.

"Yes, it's definitely something else," Kasumi said. A corgi was trying to approach her, and she looked unsure of how to react to it before backing away from it. "Um, what is this, exactly?"

"This, Kensei-kun, is U.A.'s most vital facility: the Lovely Livingspace for Jungle Dwellers, or 'LLJ', an acronym we are in our legal right to use! I had this built out of my own pocket to provide a home for my animal friends who bear similarities with Syrup and Oboro until the day I can find each and every one of them a home with someone who will love them right. Of course, the LLJ is only for housing the smaller and tamer animals; Ground Omega has been converted into a living space for larger animals, animals who are a bit wilder, and animals who need more specialized environments to live in." At that same moment, one of the bandicoots Syrup and Oboro were playing with spun around like a top.

"All of these animals have Quirks, just like Syrup and Oboro. Wow, I guess it's no wonder that they're getting along so well," Isuzu said.

"Yes, that's certainly a factor." Of course, Kaede and Risa knew a bit more about what Nedzu was getting at, that the animals had to have come from the same terrible place Syrup and Oboro escaped from when they first found them. It was great that they were all able to find a better place to live, and Kaede could tell from looking at Risa that she was also wishing that they were allowed to be fully open about why they were so happy.

"Well, if it's a place like this, I'm sure those two won't mind staying here a few hours a day," Risa said.

"I wanna stay here, too!" Kaede said. Risa patted her on the head as if she was humoring her; it wasn't as if she was joking, though.

"So, there you have it. Whenever you're going to start a compulsory subject, just bring Syrup and Oboro here, and then you can come pick them up for lunch, Hero Training, or when you're going home, of course," Nedzu said.

"Of course, of course. Kaede, since you're super slow, you should probably leave it to me so you don't end up missing class," Risa said.

"Of course, of course," Kaede said while watching a platypus make a fedora appear out of thin air before running off somewhere. Once that was done, she caught sight of Kasumi staring down a white snake that was repeatedly flicking its tongue at her. The look on her face resembled the odd look she had the first time she met Syrup, and it was just as odd as that one.

"Having fun, are we?" When Isuzu asked that, Kasumi jumped back and spouted something surprisingly unintelligible at her, and Isuzu just laughed when Kasumi tried to hide her dismay at the snake slithering off somewhere.

"I wanna go to class now," Kasumi said. For one reason or another, that made Isuzu laugh even harder.

* * *

Once Syrup and Oboro were pulled away from their friends and Kaede and Risa finished filling out some paperwork, they were all free to go to their classes. Isuzu split off from them to head for the Support Course, so it was just Kaede, Risa, and Kasumi making their way to class 1-A of the Hero Course, Syrup and Oboro tagging along for the ride.

"U-Um, good morning!" Along with the green-haired boy they ran into outside the door, evidently.

"Hey, you're the guy with the Quirk that makes him bad at talking to girls! Should we leave?" Kaede asked.

"No, I think his Quirk has something to do with burning clothes," Risa said. "Still, good to see you. I told you you'd make it in!"

"N-Neither of those is what my Quirk is, but yeah, I guess I had less to worry about than I thought I did. It's nice to see you again, um—Wait, did we ever say what our names are?" the boy asked.

"Oh, I guess we didn't." From there, everyone introduced themselves to the boy, with the boy introducing himself as Izuku Midoriya.

"Nice to meet you, Midoriya-kun," Kaede said right before Syrup let out a cry. "Oh, Syrup says it's nice to meet you, too."

"Oh, okay? Hey, why do you and Shiramine-san have animals, anyway?" Midoriya asked.

"Because they're our friends!"

"And they help us fight," Risa said, Oboro adding a yip to the conversation.

"They help you fight? You mean those are animals that possess Quirks? That's incredible! Animals with Quirks are rare enough as it is, but to think that I'd be able to see two in one place! Come to think of it, I remember reading online that U.A. actually has an animal sanctuary supposedly filled with animals that use Quirks. Did Syrup and Oboro come from there? No, you two look too familiar with them for them to be recent additions to your lives, so you've probably had them for years. What kind of Quirks would a turtle and a fox even have? A turtle probably has something to do with defense, and that would go along well with Honjo-san's weird shield, but a fox—"

"Hold it," Kasumi interjected. Everyone looked at her for a few seconds before she said, "I didn't have anything to add, I just wanted all of that to stop."

"S-Sorry! I do that when I'm thinking about Quirks too much," Midoriya said.

"I guess I'm just gonna have to get used to that, then," Kaede said.

"Huh? What do you mean?"

"Don't worry about it. It's the kind of thing you gotta see to believe, trust me," Risa said. She gave Midoriya a pat on the back and his face went red as he stammered out a great deal of nonsense; Kaede was further convinced that his Quirk was a Quirk that made it so he couldn't talk to women, and if it was, she wanted no part of it.

"Well, let's go inside. I want to see if Mai-chan and Yui-chan made it in!" Kaede said.

"I just hope there isn't anyone who'll give me a hard time," Midoriya said. Kaede didn't think about that too much as she opened the door to the class with the hope that the first thing she'd see would be Mai and Yui beaming at the sight of her and rushing up to hug her.

"Hell yeah!" Instead, she was greeted to the conclusion of an arm-wrestling match so intense that a desk shattered when the loser's hand was slammed against it. "In your _face_, boy! Not so tough now, are ya?"

"Fuck you, you muscly fuck!" The one spouting obscenities was the loser of the match picking himself up off the floor. With his speech patterns and white hair, Kaede recognized him as the boy who almost stepped on Mai and Yui a month ago, and she assumed that his foul tongue was why Midoriya recoiled at the sight of him.

"Raiden-kun! How dare you break one of the desks our predecessors once used! You should go to the principal's office and demand to write a five-page essay in apology!" The one who said that was a bespectacled boy with blue hair and rigid posture; for some reason, Midoriya further recoiled at the sight of him.

"Hey, it's the desk's fault for not being able to handle me! You got a problem with that, try and do something about it, Iida! Wouldn't be the first time I had to kick the snot out of an egghead from Soumei!" Raiden stared down the bespectacled boy with her dark red eyes while smiling wide and cracking her knuckles. Her jacket hung off of her shoulders like a cape and put her muscular arms on full display, the length of her skirt was brought down to a few centimeters above her ankles, and her hair—blonde with electric blue highlights—was tied up in a spiky, messy ponytail.

The first thought that crossed Kaede's mind was, "A delinquent!", and the second thought that crossed her mind was, "That's kind of cool in a scary kind of way!"

"I can't believe someone so violent wants to be a Hero! It's just—" The bespectacled boy stopped himself short before stepping over to Kaede's group by the door. "Hello, I am Tenya Iida from Soumei Junior High—"

"Yeah, we heard," Risa cut in with a bit of curtness in her tone.

"U-Um, I'm Midoriya. Nice to meet you," Midoriya said. With how much he was shaking, Kaede had to wonder if his Quirk wasn't gender exclusive.

"Midoriya-kun, I would like to apologize for how I behaved during the exam. You were able to ascertain the true nature of the exam, and for that, you are truly a better man than me!" Iida turned his head toward Risa. "You too, miss! I was equally out of line with how I treated you, and I promise to treat you with more respect going forward!"

"Yeah, sure. You're not the one I was really mad at, anyway," Risa said. Iida looked like he was going to say more, but before he could, Raiden stepped over with incredible speed and slammed a hand down on his shoulder.

"Hey. Instead of finishing what you started, you didn't waste any time to dart off to these guys and talk about something else. Are you that afraid of me?" Raiden asked. The way Iida started to break out in a cold sweat, one that was mirrored by Midoriya, made Kaede feel that the answer was a resounding, "Yes".

"K-Knock it off, Tora-chan." Before anything else could be said, Raiden's sleeve was tugged on by a girl whose dark purple hair was done up in a large braid that covered her back and eyes were covered by her bangs, the act making her sigh and tell Iida to run along. As Kaede looked at her, she noticed that in her free hand was a wooden doll with tentacles for arms and legs and a bonnet that resembled a leech.

"Kaede-san, why are you staring at that thing?" Kasumi asked.

"Because it looks cool. Why else?" Kaede asked, the question the easiest one to make at the moment. The girl with the doll smiled a bit as she let out a small yelp, and immediately after, Raiden stepped in front of Kaede with a wide smile on her face.

"Kaede, was it? Well, anyone who thinks Hinata's dolls are cool is okay in my book," Raiden said. "Name's Torako Raiden, the White Tiger of Dasomia—"

"Self-proclaimed," Hinata cut in.

"But still well-deserved! Anyway, you look like the kind of girl who knows how to throw down, so whenever you feel like it, let's have a go."

"Sure! Wait, does it have to be a _fight _fight, though? I could play you in a game of Tycoon if you want, or maybe _Shrek SuperSlam_. I'm really good with Captain Hook," Kaede said. Raiden laughed at that, and because Kaede didn't know what was going on, she laughed, also.

"Kaede, you really need to stop attracting weirdos," Risa said.

"What does that say about us, then?" Kasumi asked. In the middle of all of that, Midoriya had stepped away from the group to talk—or at least what counted as talking for him—with a rosy-cheeked brunette who seemed to know him. It was good that he was at least making an effort, she supposed.

"Well, I sure got a lively bunch of kids this year. This is gonna be fun for the whole family." At the sound of the familiar voice, Kaede turned around to see the familiar half-armored form of Shirakumo, who floated onto the scene atop a small cloud.

"Oh my God, y-you're Loud Cloud!" Midoriya said, trading his look of embarrassment for a look of excitement.

"Hi, Mr. Shirakumo!" Kaede said, Syrup letting out a cry as she waved at him.

"Honjo, good to see ya! Good to see Syrup, too, in addition to all of you other people who I've never seen or heard of before today," Shirakumo said. "Hey, you mind giving a guy a little room?" Kaede and everyone else by the door stepped further inside the classroom, allowing Shirakumo to float inside and over to his desk.

"I can't believe the Number Four Hero is teaching our class! I already knew that he was a teacher here, but I didn't think we'd be able to spend this much time with someone like him!" Kaede heard Midoriya mumble something along those lines under his breath.

"So, in case some of you haven't figured it out yet, I'm Loud Cloud, but since I'm off the clock, feel free to call me whatever you feel like. Now, to start things off, let's—Wait, actually, before that, what's all of that?" Shirakumo pointed to the shattered remains of the desk Raiden broke.

"Oh, I did that," Raiden said.

"Why, though?"

"I was arm-wrestling and it couldn't stand up to the awesome might that is me."

"Tora-chan, stop it!" Hinata cried.

"Who won the match, though?" Shirakumo asked.

"Me. Because I'm awesome," Raiden said. The foul-mouthed boy she beat snarled at her, but he was silenced when Shirakumo gave her a thumbs up.

"You got spunk, Raiden. I like that," Shirakumo said.

"Sir! Is it truly appropriate to let Raiden-kun get away with destroying school property?" Iida asked.

"It's fine. We got, like, hundreds of those gathering dust in a shed out back." Raiden stuck her tongue out at Iida and Hinata admonished her for it. "Now for the thing that was supposed to be the first thing when I first came in: everyone change into your gym clothes and meet me out back. We're gonna have some fun!" Even with a face covered in metal, Shirakumo could still give a good smile.

* * *

"Are you sure there can't be more than twenty people, Risa?"

"There were only twenty desks in the class, so I'm pretty sure."

"Aw, man." The reason for Kaede's dejected tone of voice was a simple one: when everyone made their way to the track and field area, Kaede was able to fully survey the class and see that Mai and Yui were nowhere to be found amongst their numbers. It was the first disappointing piece of news she had received on a day that had been nothing but highs up until then.

"It's okay. There are two classes in this department, so Mai-san and Yui-san could be in the other class. We can go look for them at the end of the day," Kasumi said.

"I know, but I wanted all of us to be in the same class because of how fun that would be," Kaede said.

"I know, I know," Risa said. She patted Kaede on the head, and that made her feel a little bit better about everything.

"Okay boys and girls, we're out here for one reason and one reason only: to do a nice little Quirk apprehension test!" Shirakumo said.

"But Mr. Shirakumo, what about the opening ceremony and going over our schedules?" the rosy-cheeked brunette asked.

"Eh, that'll all work itself out, eventually. More importantly, I need to get a good grasp of what you all can do. Sure, I've got your transcripts and all, but since you weren't allowed to use your Quirks for physical tests back then, there's a pretty good chance that everything you did was worthless."

"U-Um, sir, I'm just not good with physical activity in general, so, um, I think my scores are accurate," said Hinata, who had brought a roll along bag with her, for some reason.

"Okay, I guess you're a bad example, then. Let's try Bakugou, then. How far could you throw a softball back in junior high?"

"Sixty-seven meters." The one who answered was the foul-mouthed boy who frightened Midoriya earlier. After giving his answer, Shirakumo reached into the cloud floating next to him and pulled out a softball with a ring around it that was quickly tossed to Bakugou.

"Sorry if the ball's a little wet, what with it being inside a cloud and all. Anyway, throw it as hard as you can, and feel free to use your Quirk to help you."

"Can do." With a wicked smile on his face, Bakugou launched the ball into the air while releasing a large explosion from his hand and shouting, "Die!" at the top of his lungs; going by the looks on everyone's faces, Kaede could tell that she wasn't alone in feeling confused by all of that. The ball landed far down the field after a few seconds, and Shirakumo pulled a small tablet out of his pocket that showed Bakugou's score to be 705.2 meters.

"Holy crap! That's ten times better than what he said he could do! Awesome!" a boy with spiky red hair said.

"We really get to cut loose? Hell yeah!" Raiden, who was wearing her gym clothes the same way she wore her uniform, shouted while slamming her fist into her palm.

"Oh, so you're all happy about this? You think you're all about to have a fun time?" Shirakumo asked, Kaede and the rest of the class' reaction more or less speaking for itself. "Yeah, well don't have too much fun, because today's biggest loser is getting expelled on the spot."

"E-Expelled?" Midoriya stammered; it was a rare instance of his confusion and nervousness matching the rest of the crowd.

"But Mr. Shirakumo, that's not fair! You can't expel someone on the first day of school!" Kaede said.

"I can and I will," Shirakumo said. "This is a dangerous world full of dangerous people, and it's up to Heroes to try and bring order to it all. These next three years are to prepare you for the harshness of reality, so…" All of a sudden, Shirakumo stopped talking, pulled the cloud floating next to him up to his face, and screamed into it as if it were a pillow.

"Mr. Shirakumo? Are you all right?" After about twenty seconds of screaming, Shirakumo pulled his face out of the cloud and wiped a hand across his soaked face.

"I can't do it. Thought I could do it, but I can't. That thing I said about someone getting expelled was a lie. Nothing bad's gonna happen to anyone." Most of the class, Kaede, included, reacted to that with some variation of, "What?" "My buddy told me to do that to instill a bit of fear in any would-be slackers, and I always try and keep to it, but I can just never bring myself to follow through."

"S-So you're not going to expel anyone?" Midoriya asked.

"No, of course not! I mean, yeah, being a Hero is a tough job, especially if you're being a careless idiot," Shirakumo waved a hand over the half of him covered in armor, "but you've all got plenty of time to prepare for that; no need to go all-in right at the starting line. If you all try hard at your own pace, I'm sure you'll become great in no time. That being said, try to give it your all here, anyway; just because you won't get in trouble doesn't mean you shouldn't do your best."

"Because that's what it means to go Plus Ultra, right?" Kaede asked. Shirakumo beamed at her, and she beamed back at him. All in all, it was a good enough answer for her.

* * *

At first, Midoriya thought he was going to die from shock when Shirakumo declared that whoever failed his test, which would most likely be him, would be expelled. After that, he thought he was going to die from shock when it was revealed that the whole thing was a lie that their teacher couldn't follow through on; if Midoriya had to hazard a guess, it would be that he wouldn't die in the heat of battle, but because of a stress-induced heart attack Shirakumo forced upon him.

Even with the revelation that he wouldn't get expelled, Midoriya still couldn't relax because of how far behind he clearly was from everyone. The first test was a fifty-meter dash, and right from the start, it was clear that there were a good number of people who could use their Quirks to give them a boost in speed: Iida with the engines in his legs, Shiramine—he enjoyed watching her race the most—with the aura she surrounded herself in, even Aoyama and his odd usage of his laser beam. Quirks were clearly the best way to go about it, but Midoriya wasn't afforded that luxury, not when using his Quirk would break all of the bones in his body.

_Relying on just my natural strength is no good, either_, Midoriya thought as he kept watching the races. _I might have spent ten months getting in shape with All Might's training program, but I can tell that I'm still way behind most of these people; I guess ten months of training really can't compare to people who have been doing it their whole lives. Even though I know there aren't any stakes here, it still sucks that I'm going to come in last because I couldn't do anything!_

"Runners 17 and 18, take your marks!" Shirakumo said. The runners in question were Bakugou and Honjo, the latter of whom took a noticeable while to get to the starting line; the shield definitely wasn't doing her any favors, but if she was still holding onto it, there had to be a reason for it.

"Can't believe I gotta race your slow ass. I'd beat anyone here, but whoever loses to me should at least put up a fight," Bakugou said.

"I could use that one, but it makes me look weird. Could also go with that one, but do I have enough room? Probably not." Honjo kept muttering things of that nature, and Midoriya didn't know what to make of it.

"Hey, Shield Girl! At least _try _and get your ass in—"

"I know! Fierce Wings!" Out of nowhere, a small red jewel appeared on Honjo's shield. Immediately after, the jewel shined with a red glow, and out from Honjo's back sprouted a pair of red wings almost as big as her. The sight of it told Midoriya that not only was he not crazy to think that Honjo shouted the name of the Quirk belonging to the Number Three Hero, but she somehow managed to use her shield to manifest it. Everyone except for Shiramine, Kensei, and Shirakumo had some level of surprise, and Bakugou was so stunned that it took him a moment to get going when they were told to run. He was even faster than usual thanks to his Quirk, but Honjo ended up beating his time by about 0.7 seconds.

"Risa, Kasumi-san, I won! There's no prize or anything, but I won!" Honjo flew over to her friends and let Syrup nuzzle against her face, the entire group seemingly incapable of reading the atmosphere.

"What the fuck was that?" Bakugou shouted as he stomped back over to the class.

"What was what?" Honjo asked.

"Ignore him, he's just being a sore loser," Shiramine said.

"Fuck you, Fox Girl!" Bakugou said; Midoriya tried not to show it, but a part of him couldn't help but admire how easily Shiramine stood up to him.

"Honjo, how and why were you able to use Hawks' Quirk? You aren't secretly related to him, are you?" asked Todoroki, a boy with red and white hair and an old scar plastered across the side of his face.

"What? No, of course not!" Honjo said; Todoroki didn't look entirely convinced. "No, I just have Hawks' Quirk because he gave it to me. Actually, it's kind of itching a little, so, Release!" Hawks' wings that should never have been on Honjo vanished into thin air.

"He gave it to you? What does that mean?" asked Jirou, a girl whose earlobes were stretched out into earphone jacks.

"Kaede-san's Quirk allows her to copy the Quirk of anyone who comes into contact with her shield, and even combine those Quirks into ones of her own design," Kensei said.

"Every Quirk I have also increases my defense, and between the Quirks people have given me and the Quirks I've made by myself, my defense has been boosted hundreds of times over! Please don't try and test it out, though," Honjo said. It was the most ridiculous thing Midoriya had ever heard in his life, yet Honjo said it with complete and utter honesty and sincerity. His mind was racing trying to process everything she said and the ramifications of it all, but it was quickly interrupted when Raiden started laughing at the top of her lungs.

"Oh man, that's awesome! That's gotta be the coolest Quirk ever after mine!" Raiden said. "I knew you were something else, Kaede, I just knew it!"

"Thanks, I think."

"You really have hundreds of Quirks? How did that happen?" Kaminari, a boy with a black stripe running through blonde hair, asked.

"I told you, people give them to me. It's all part of our business model."

"'Business model'? Wait, girl with a shield who can copy other people's Quirks—Are you the same Kaede Honjo from Maple Tree Industries?" Ashido, a girl with pink skin, black sclera, and antennae, asked. Honjo just nodded her head at that, and everyone had a variety of reactions in the vein of, "I knew this sounded familiar!"

"Oh, good to know that we've still got a bit of clout from that," Shiramine said. "By the way, our services are still being offered for anyone who wants them. If you want to know what Quirk your future child will have, or want someone to give you advice on how to handle your Quirk, we'll do either or for just a thousand yen. Or some food. Whatever you have on you."

"Cool! Hey, do us!" Ashido pulled Kirishima, a boy with spiky red hair, by the arm over to Honjo, despite his protests.

"Do you want to know what Quirk your baby will have, or do you want life advice?" Honjo asked.

"Yes!"

"I didn't agree to this, you know!" Kirishima said. "I mean, might as well do it since we're here, but let the record show that I didn't agree to this."

"Duly noted," Honjo said before tapping the both of them with her shield. Ashido and Kirishima stumbled a bit as two new jewels appeared on Honjo's shield. "Hardening and Acid. Okay, if you put those together, you get—Wait, hold on. If I put Acid with that, and also with that, and maybe if I put it with the both of those, then—Wow, I can do so much with this one! Ashido-san, can I keep you on retainer?"

"I feel like I'm going to regret this, but okay," Ashido said. Honjo let out a cheer before finally combining the Quirks into Hard Acid, a Quirk that would allow the user to continually secrete acid while continually hardening their flesh. Ashido was elated by the reveal while Kirishima tried to ignore it. Whether it was out of a genuine desire for her services or general curiosity, more people came to Honjo asking her to use her Quirk on them, though Shirakumo said to save it for after class and that they needed to get back to the tests.

It was Midoriya's turn to run the fifty-meter dash. Naturally, Raiden outpaced so much that it wasn't even funny, but with how much everything that was Honjo was occupying his mind, it barely even registered.

* * *

The second test was a measure of grip strength, one that Midoriya wanted to believe he could perform well at. He remembered the talk he had with All Might about the sensation of using One for All and how it felt like putting an egg in a microwave. All Might told him to keep that image in his mind and try to visualize the egg not bursting, as the egg was a clear and cut metaphor for his bones. He tried to do that the best that he could, but at the same time, he couldn't stop thinking about how he was left a floppy pile of broken bones the last time he used One for All. Once again, he couldn't bring himself to use his Quirk, and his score was stuck at a meager fifty-six kilograms.

"Okay, just gonna keep it simple on this one. Power!" Sure enough, Honjo was pulling another Quirk out of her ridiculously large inventory. She gripped her machine with a strength level that acted in direct contrast to her small frame and ended up with a score of seven-hundred kilograms, the best in the class, so far. When Midoriya asked her where the Quirk came from, she said that she got it from top-ranking Heroes in Greece, Pankration, the last time he was in Japan; it certainly explained why it was so powerful, but at the same time, it just made Midoriya further question the oddity that was Kaede Honjo.

"U-Um, Mr. Shirakumo, sir, is it really all right if I don't actually do this, myself?" While Midoriya was still pondering Honjo's being, he caught sight of Karakuri, Raiden's shy friend with the doll and the roll along bag, talking to Shirakumo.

"If your Quirk can help you out, then it's fine," Shirakumo said.

"O-Okay." Karakuri bowed a few times before putting down her grip tester and opening up her roll along bag. The bag was full of wooden dolls with the same level of creepiness as the one that Honjo liked for whatever reason. She pulled out a doll with six muscular arms, two tiny legs, and a giant eyeball for a head. It truly was hard to look at.

"Oh, another cool one!" Honjo was of the opposite opinion, for whatever reason.

"Let it rip, Hinata!" Raiden shouted.

"P-Please stop making people look at me!" Karakuri said, going red in the face. She placed the doll on the ground, its arms so large that they acted as its support while its tiny legs hung in the air, and said, "L-Let's go, Aegaeon." At Karakuri's command, the doll's single eye lit up and, to Midoriya's surprise, it started moving all on its own. It used its massive fists to carry itself over to the grip tester and lifted it up over its one eye. It used five of its six arms to squeeze on the machine while letting out a ghastly noise that made Midoriya want to cry until it was given a score of six-hundred and sixty-six kilograms. The doll let out another ghastly noise framed as some sort of triumphant yell before throwing the machine to the ground and losing the shine in its eye that signified its lifeness.

"Wow, that's such a great score, Karakuri-san! Nice job!" Honjo said.

"Th-Thank you. Um, if you want, you can just call me by my first name, you know," Karakuri said as she put her doll away.

"Okay, but you gotta do the same for me, Hinata-san." Karakuri did what probably passed for a smile for her, and Midoriya couldn't help but marvel at Honjo's natural magnetism.

"Hell yeah! Now I'm fired up! Let's go!" Electricity crackled around Raiden's arms as she squeezed her grip tester hard. A flash of electricity discharged around her, and before Midoriya knew what was going on, the grip tester broke apart in front of her. "Oops. Teach, can I get a new one?"

"No. Let's just say you automatically win this one," Shirakumo said.

"Woohoo!" Raiden threw what remained of her grip tester onto the ground, and Karakuri told her to stop destroying school property, a request that was met with merely a half-hearted agreement.

"Well I certainly feel inadequate," Kaminari said. If nothing else, Midoriya could take solace in there being another person in his boat.

* * *

The tests kept going and going from there. The third test was the standing long jump, something Midoriya handled pathetically and Honjo handled with ease by using Big Step, the Quirk of the Pro Hero Rapid Rabbit who was apparently Honjo's cousin. The fourth test was consecutive side hops, something Midoriya handled pathetically and Shiramine handled with ease with a combination of her Quirk and apparently quick reflexes. The fifth test was the softball pitch, and before Midoriya could do something worthless, a total of four insane performances happened before his eyes: Honjo using a wind-based Quirk to launch her ball far away from the campus grounds, Karakuri using Eurytus, a doll with wheels for legs and a miniature trebuchet for a head, to launch her ball an incredible distance, Raiden sending her ball flying with a punch that was drenched in electricity, an action that got another complaint from Kaminari, and Uraraka using her zero-gravity Quirk to make her ball fly so far out of sight that she was given a score of infinity.

Soon enough, it was Midoriya's turn to throw, and he could feel nothing but frustration. Even though he knew nothing bad would happen if he failed, that didn't mean he was okay with it. He was supposed to be All Might's successor, he was supposed to be the latest inheritor of the most powerful Quirk in the world, yet he couldn't even outperform a single person in basic physical fitness. Frustration was building up inside of him to the point of being unbearable, and before he knew it, he was throwing caution to the wind and committing to using One for All at full blast.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on a second." Only for Shirakumo to wrap an elongated cloud around his hand before he could properly activate his Quirk. "Level with me, Midoriya. Were you about to do something stupid and incredibly dangerous?"

"Um, maybe?" Midoriya asked as he tried and failed to get his hand out of Shirakumo's surprisingly dense cloud.

"Yeah, I knew it. Seen that look too many times on adults to not recognize it on a kid," Shirakumo said; for the first time that day, he was wearing something other than a smile on his face. "Was I not clear when I said that it was fine for you all to take it easy in the beginning? Why am I even a teacher if kids won't listen to me?"

"I heard what you said, but I can't afford to take things easy! I just—I just _can't_!"

"Oh yeah? Why's that?" To Midoriya's surprise, it was Shiramine who was asking him the question.

"B-Because I'm not like you and Honjo-san and everyone else. I-I've never really had what it took to be a Hero. I was weak for most of my life growing up, and it wasn't until recently that I had a chance to become stronger, but even with that, I can't use my Quirk without hurting myself. I'm behind every person here right from the start, but I can't let it stay that way, not when All—all sorts of people have been offering me their support. I know that this doesn't count for anything, but if I'm not even able to do well at something like this, then it'll feel like everything I've done this past year has been pointless!" The only solace being afforded to Midoriya was that he was doing a better job of not crying in public than he thought he would.

"Hey, Midoriya, look over there. What do you see?" Midoriya turned in the direction Shiramine was pointing in.

"Um, Honjo-san using one of the softballs to play catch with Syrup, Kensei-san, Raiden-san, and Karakuri-san?"

"Yeah, that's definitely something Kaede would be doing. You probably see Kaede as some sort of unstoppable juggernaut, right?" Midoriya nodded his head. "Well, she might as well be, but that girl is also super afraid of getting hurt in any possible way. Not just getting punched in the face or anything like that, even splinters and papercuts freak her out."

"Wait, really? I mean, she said something about not wanting us to test out how durable she was, but she's really completely afraid of getting hurt?"

"Completely. Kasumi's parents put a lot of pressure on her to succeed, Hinata is clearly a huge bundle of anxiety problems, and two of my other friends might not have even gotten into this school. As for me, well, I have trouble being honest with certain people about, well, certain things in regards to certain people." Shiramine was still looking in Honjo's direction when she said that.

"Hey, you're looking kind of red. You need to lie down?" Shirakumo asked.

"No! Look, the point is that while we're all way better than you when it comes to how we handle our Quirks," That stung about as much as Midoriya thought it would, "but that doesn't mean we aren't all a bunch of kids doing a slapdash job of handling our own baggage. We've all got problems, but we can't try and handle them by throwing caution to the wind and doing whatever! If you really feel like you owe being here to someone, then show your gratitude by not being an idiot about whatever comes next!"

"Couldn't have said it better myself. Although, as a teacher, I probably should have at least said that, but you were on a roll, so I didn't want to interrupt," Shirakumo said. "Okay, let's do this one more time, and remember, don't be an idiot." Shirakumo dissolved his cloud and freed Midoriya's hand before he and Shiramine stepped back into the crowd. The dampness on his hand was doing what it could to help him cool down and think a little better, and the boon turned out to be a good amount.

_They're right. More than anything, I want to prove to myself that I've earned my place here, but I'm not good enough to have the luxury of just going in at full blast without thinking about the consequences_, Midoriya thought. _Until I fully master One for All, everything I do has the chance of destroying my body, so I need to be smart about how I use it! I need to try and use it in a way that will lead to the least amount of backlash! That's the only way I can even have a chance of keeping up with everyone, so let's go! _

With that thought in mind, Midoriya swung his arm and paid careful attention to what was happening with the softball. He kept track of it as it shifted against his palm, as it started to move upwards out of his hand, as his fingers left it one by one until only a single digit was still making contact. That was the moment he was looking for. It was the last possible moment of contact available to him, and it was then that he allowed One for All to activate and send the softball flying across the field, eventually giving him a score of 705.3 meters.

His finger hurt like hell, but if it was just his finger, then he could live with it.

"Mr. Shirakumo, Shiramine-san, is this me being an idiot?" Midoriya asked, doing the best he could to hold back tears of pain.

"Kind of, yeah, but good job on what I assume is self-improvement!" Shiramine said.

"You finally did it, nice going!" Uraraka said.

"I'm getting an odd sense of deja vu from all of this," Iida said.

"So something like that was supposed to happen, then? How strange," Kensei said.

"Motherfucker!" Naturally, it was a statement from Bakugou that interrupted the string of largely positive commentary Midoriya was receiving, and with the emergence of the comment went his brief moment of being in a good mood. "The fuck is this, Deku? Explain now, shitstain!" Before Midoriya even had a chance to concoct a terrible excuse, Bakugou was already using his Quirk to launch himself at Midoriya, his motives as clear as day.

"Cover Move!" Midoriya expected the next sound he would hear to be Bakugou's Explosion in his ear, but instead, he heard Honjo shouting the name of another Quirk, which was followed by her teleporting in front of him and blocking Bakugou's assault with her shield. Another jewel appeared on Honjo's shield, and at the same time, Bakugou fell back while suddenly looking winded.

"You're kind of a big jerk, you know. Stop doing that, already," Honjo said, Syrup adding in a cry as he rested atop Honjo's head.

"Stay out of this, Shield Girl! Where do you get off covering his ass and stealing my—Wait a sec, it's you! You're that bitch who bonked me on the head with a shield when I was a kid, saying some crap about how you wanted my Quirk!"

"Did I do that? I've done that with a lot of people, so you're gonna have to help me narrow it down." If Midoriya wasn't feeling so scared, he might have at least tried to say that that wasn't the best thing for Honjo to say.

"You calling _me_ forgettable? I'm gonna kill you, you little—" Bakugou was cut off when a small cloud suddenly wrapped itself around his head.

"Okay, looks like I got another chance to be a good teacher, so thanks for that," Shirakumo said. Muffled moans kept escaping from Bakugou as he tried and failed to claw away at the cloud around his head. "Listen, it's the first day of school, and if I wanted people to get into trouble, I would have been serious about that expulsion thing, so why don't we all just cool down a bit before someone here does something they might regret, okay?" After a few seconds, Bakugou stopped clawing at the cloud around his head. "Wait, is this because you agree with me or because you can't breathe? Tap on the cloud once for the first one, twice for the second one." Bakugou tapped on the cloud once. "Oh, that's a relief." Shirakumo pulled the cloud off of Bakugou, and he stomped away from the scene in a huff. "Well, that's something. Okay, we should get ready for the next test, but you might want to visit Recovery Girl real quick. Food for thought." Shirakumo walked off while whistling a jaunty.

"U-Um, thanks for helping me there, Honjo-san," Midoriya said.

"Hey, don't mention it," Honjo said. "Besides, I was looking for a good chance to use that Quirk, so—Oh my God, your finger!"

"My finger? Oh, yeah. It's sort of, kind of, broken."

"Ew, gross! I'm getting sympathy pains just from looking at it!" Honjo hid herself behind her shield. The pain Midoriya was feeling was incredible, but Honjo looked as if she were feeling even sicker than him.

"I think I can hold on through the rest of the tests. After that, Recovery Girl should—"

"No need for that. Oboro," Shiramine cut in. At her command, Oboro snapped to attention from atop her shoulders and spat a fireball onto Midoriya's arm. The sight of his arm being engulfed in flames sent him into a panic, but it died down once he realized that not only was the fire not hurting him, but the pain in his finger was fading away.

"Oboro breathes fire that heals injuries?"

"That's one kind of fire he breathes, anyway." The fire died down in tandem with Shiramine's smile, and while Midoriya's finger still hurt a little, it was nowhere near as bad as it was a moment ago. "Don't go thinking you can always run to me for help with that. But speaking of help, Kaede, think you can lend him a hand?"

"Nuh-uh. No _way_, Risa! His Quirk breaks his bones when he uses it, and I don't want a bone hurting Quirk!" Honjo said.

"That's not what it is. It's just a strength enhancer that breaks his bones because he's bad at using it, so—"

"No, no, Honjo-san's right!" Midoriya interjected. "It is physically impossible to use my Quirk without breaking bones! That's the very bad and very real side effect of, um, of Bone Hurting! Which is what my Quirk is and what it does!"

"See! I told you it was a bone hurting Quirk! I'm gonna be sick!" Honjo truly did look like she was going to vomit, and it was only Shiramine hugging her and constantly saying, "There, there, it's okay." that got her to calm down a little.

_I'm sorry I had to do that, Honjo-san, but if you're able to permanently copy someone's Quirk, then I _really _don't think it's a good idea to let you copy One for All! _Midoriya thought as Shiramine and Honjo walked away, with Shiramine repeatedly giving Honjo words of encouragement.

* * *

After the ball throw, everyone went through sit-ups, long-distance running, and seated toe touches. Nothing noteworthy happened in any of those events, so there was little to nothing to comment on. Either way, Shirakumo's tests were over, and the results were as follows:

Kaede Honjo

Risa Shiramine

Torako Raiden

Shouto Todoroki

Katsuki Bakugou

Tenya Iida

Kasumi Kensei

Fumikage Tokoyami

Mezou Shouji

Eijirou Kirishima

Mina Ashido

Ochaco Uraraka

Koji Koda

Tsuyu Asui

Yuga Aoyama

Denki Kaminari

Kyoka Jirou

Hinata Karakuri

Tooru Hagakure

Izuku Midoriya

Just as Midoriya had expected, he came in dead last, his test results coming nowhere close to what the rest of the class had been capable of. Thanks to Shirakumo and Shiramine's words, however, it didn't feel as humiliating as he thought it would. Thanks to Shirakumo and Shiramine's words, however, he knew that it didn't mean he was hopeless; if anything, it told him that he just needed to keep trying and that there wasn't anything wrong with that.

Even though Oboro's fire had long since vanished, Midoriya couldn't help but feel a little warm when he thought back to Shiramine.

* * *

With Shirakumo's test finished, everyone was excused to go home on account of the first day of school being a half day. Kaede rushed—or, rather, had Risa give her a piggyback ride—over to 1-B to confirm that Mai and Yui were there. To her unfortunate disappointment, not only were they not there, but no one in the class had even heard of them. Kaede was so dejected that she barely even registered Hououin declaring that their fated battle had only just begun and Risa and Kasumi throwing out a quick advertisement for the business, something they couldn't even do that day because Kaede had too many Quirks loaded into her shield that she didn't want to part with.

"This is the saddest piggyback ride I've ever had," Kaede said, resting her moping face in the crook of Risa's neck.

"I know, I'm sad, too," Risa said, Oboro adding in a yip as he trotted next to her. "I mean, yeah, Mai didn't seem like she was doing all that hot when I ran into her at the end of the exam, but I didn't think she would have done so bad that she couldn't get in."

"I felt the same about Yui-san," Kasumi said. "It's very surprising that neither of them managed to make it in, especially after what we've seen of some of our classmates today. I don't want to be rude, but it feels like the bar for getting in might not be as high as one might think."

"I never even got their email addresses," Kaede said, further sinking into Risa despite the weird noise she made. "This sucks. Now they're all alone wherever they are. Why would the teachers here break up a potential sextet? Don't they know that two's the loneliest number since the number one?" Syrup let out a cry as he gently landed atop Kaede's head.

"Look, it'll be fine. Eventually. Maybe. Let's just find Isuzu and go home, okay? We can play _Shrek SuperSlam _at your place, and Torako gave you her player ID, so we can challenge her to a match if we feel like it, right?"

"Yeah, I guess playing with Torako could be fun." Torako was apparently a Big Bad Wolf main, which meant that she was garbage, so beating her repeatedly could help get her mind off of things. "That's not the kind of fun I wanted to have today, though."

"I get that, but we really can't do anything about it. Just try and look them up on Twitter or something, because it's not like we're gonna just randomly run into them, or anything."

"That sounds like a setup for something, you know," Kasumi said. Kaede could tell that Risa was getting some sort of retort ready, but before it could come out, she stopped moving as a bathroom door swung out in front of her.

"Oh, sorry! We didn't hit you, did we?" asked whoever was exiting the bathroom.

"You just barely missed, so—Wait, what?" Kaede moved her head away from Risa's neck and immediately saw why she stopped herself short: the people who just exited the bathroom were none other than Mai and Yui.

"I didn't think something would actually happen," Kasumi mumbled.

"Mai-chan! Yui-chan! I knew it! You two really did make it in!" Kaede said with a smile.

"Kaede-san, it's good to see you and everyone again," Mai said.

"It really is good to see you all, but I don't think you should be so happy for us," Yui said. Both of the girls looked and sounded rather melancholic when they spoke. As Kaede started to wonder why that was, she caught sight of the way their uniforms were stylized and saw that it was slightly different from her own. If Kaede was remembering right, that specific style was for people who were in General Studies, and with that remembrance came the realization of why Mai and Yui seemed so upset.

"Wanna get a drink and talk about it?" That was all Kaede could offer at the moment, but she hoped she could do more for her two friends when the time arose.

* * *

**Class 1-A Seating Chart**

**1\. Yuga Aoyama**

**2\. Mina Ashido**

**3\. Tsuyu Asui**

**4\. Tenya Iida**

**5\. Ochaco Uraraka**

**6\. Denki Kaminari**

**7\. Hinata Karakuri**

**8\. Eijirou Kirishima**

**9\. Kasumi Kensei**

**10\. Koji Koda**

**11\. Risa Shiramine**

**12\. Mezou Shouji**

**13\. Kyoka Jirou**

**14\. Fumikage Tokoyami**

**15\. Shouto Todoroki**

**16\. Tooru Hagakure**

**17\. Katsuki Bakugou**

**18\. Kaede Honjo**

**19\. Izuku Midoriya**

**20\. Torako Raiden**

* * *

**Since most of you are probably thinking it, no, Raiden and Hinata are not OCs. Both of them are characters who show up in the later arcs of the web novel, although Raiden's original name is Velvet, and they're both just great additions to the story. Read the web novel if you have the chance.**

* * *

**Name: Oboro/Subject 2020-KTN**

**Quirk: Demon Fox**

***This Quirk is a combination of multiple Quirks via breeding and experimentation.**

***Abilities: Oboro has enhanced speed, can use pyrokinesis, and can create illusions capable of actually harming people by sending commands into their brains to make them register the pain as being legitimate.**

***Oboro's fire can be used to heal injuries to a certain extent.**

****Updates on all information pending. **

* * *

**Name: Kaede Honjo**

**Quirk: Devour**

***Creates an indestructible shield that attaches itself to her left hand. If Kaede is ever more than a meter than a half away from her shield, either the shield will be teleported to her hand or she'll be teleported to the shield.**

***Holding the shield causes Kaede's natural defense to increase and make certain attacks painless. The boost in defense increases as Kaede increases the number of Quirks she copied.**

***If the shield makes contact with a Quirk user, their energy will be drained and Kaede will obtain a copy of their Quirk, along with complete knowledge of how it works. Once she has copied ten Quirks, all new Quirks are sent into an "inventory" for later use.**

***When Kaede falls asleep for at least one hour, all of the Quirks in her shield are taken out and put into her inventory. Kaede is then free to install as many Quirks as she wants into her shield, and she can keep taking Quirks from her inventory over the course of the day until the first time she reaches ten Quirks.**

***Copied Quirks can only be activated by saying their name out loud. In addition, Kaede can combine her Quirks into new ones. Quirks used for this are immediately erased and have to be copied again to be usable.**

***Devour cannot copy the Quirks of animals.**

***When Kaede uses a Quirk created through the combination of multiple Quirks, there is a chance that her body will mutate in the way that it would have if that Quirk had been the Quirk she was born with. This lasts until she formally deactivates her Quirks, and if she is using multiple Quirks that activate this condition, her mutation will only be the mutation for the last Quirk she used.**

***Kaede's Active Quirks:**

****Fierce Wings(Hawks)**

****Hardening(Eijirou Kirishima)**

****Acid(Mina Ashido)**

****Hard Acid**

****Power(Pankration)**

****Big Step(Rapid Rabbit/Big Sis Hayate)**

****Whirlwind(Loud Boy)**

****Cover Move**

****Explosion(Katsuki Bakugou)**

***Quirks in Inventory:**

****Long Neck(Random kid)**

****Muscle Growth(Random kid)**

****Glamour(Random kid)**

****Earphone Jack(Kyoka Jirou)**

****Life Force(Kyudai Garaki)**

****Bouncy Laser(Sugiko Honjo)**

****Stretchy Fingers(Friend of pomeranian boy)**

****Puffy Cheeks(Random kid)**

****Rock Fist(Random kid)**

****Nitro Wings**

****High-Speed Portal Cutter**

****Shield(Crust)**

****Top Gear(Risa Shiramine)**

****Burning Letters(Shy)**

****Gas(Spirits)**

****Restaurering(Lady Black)**

****Sleeping Strike(Meng Long)**

****Tape(Random kid)**

****Triple Spark**

****Lizard Tail Splitter(Random kid)**

****Centaur(Random customer)**

****Minotaur(Random customer)**

****Minnocence**

****Leap(Pop Step)**

****Slide and Glide(The Hauler)**

****Air Slide**

****Earth Flow(Pixie-Bob)**

****Gatling(Gunhead)**

****Earth Bullets**

****Lip Service(Random customer)**

****Book Maker(Random customer)**

****Angry Umbrella(Random customer)**

****Duto Dodge(Random customer)**

****Dark Elbow(Random customer)**

****Sabotage Beam(Random customer)**

****Spring Grocery(Random customer)**

****Noisy Summer Beetle(Random customer)**

****Beautification**

****Alchemy(Isuzu Haganeno)**

****Transform(Himiko Toga)**

****Rabbit(Mirko)**

****Slipknot(Climb Anything-Man)**

****Seiryu(Azulong)**

****Stinger(Honey Trap/Big Sis Hani)**

****Heel Stinger**

****Mummification(Mummy)**

****Dog(Hound Dog)**

****Stronghold(Barrierfreeman)**

****Infinite Creation of Swords(Kasumi)**

****Plastic Love**

****Wooly**

****Ifrit(Kyouma Hououin)**

****Chainsaw(Chainsawman)**

****Oblivion(Nayuta)**

****Owl(Owl Lady)**

****Glyph(Luzura)**

****Abomination(Amity and her Monster)**

****Holopsicon(Altair)**

****Elemental Symphony(Vogelchevalier)**

****Grimoire(Avalken)**

****Berlichingen(Scarlet February)**

****Infinite Deception of Words(Tindalos)**

****Etcetera, etcetera**

***Discarded Quirks:**

****Wings(Friend of Katsuki Bakugou)**

****Knives Out(Matsuda Honjo)**

****Warp Gate(Kurogiri)**

****Spark(Random kid)**

****Matchstick(Random kid)**

****Lighter(Random kid)**

****Elasticity(Gentle Criminal)**

****Love(La Brava)**

****Charm(Saito)**

****Hair-Raiser(Mr. Brave)**

****Hair Extension(Random kid)**

****Cow(Cow Lady)**

****Etcetera, etcetera**

*****Updates on all information pending**


End file.
